#WEareBALTZ
Believing, Achieving, Learning & Team Building with Zeal!
Happy New Year from Baltz!
Happy Holidays to those who celebrated over the winter break and Happy New Year to all of our Baltz Families. 2019 flew by and left us with a lot of great memories and progress. We are excited to see the students and start our journey through 2020! Please continue to support your students and reach out to the school if you have any questions or concerns. We want to work together as a team to grow our students into the best possible versions of themselves!
Ms. O'Neil & Mrs. Palma
Upcoming Important Dates & Events!
January 2nd- Students return from Winter Break
January 3rd- NUT Day! (No Uniform Today!)
January 8th- School Choice Application Deadline
January 8th - BPO Meeting 6 pm
January 13th- Baltz Spirit Week (Details to come!)
January 16th- Band/Strings/Chorus Concert 6:30 pm
January 17th- End of Marking Period 2
January 17th- Baltz Family Fitness Night
January 20th & 21st - Schools Closed
January 24th- PBS Pajama Party
Take a peek into our classrooms!
Kindergarten Working Hard!
In reading, Kindergarten started a new story: The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. Students are continuing to explore the topic of homes through this story. We are working on identifying the main idea and key details in texts. Students are also practicing sight words to help support early reading skills. In writing, we are using our known letter sounds to help spell words to match our drawings.
In math, kindergarten students are strengthening their number sense by using objects or drawings to match numerals to quantities. Students are also practicing using groups of 5 to make numbers, for example: they can make 7 with a group of 5 and 2 ones. In addition to squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles, students are beginning to see hexagons in their geometry.
Lastly, some kindergarten classes are getting creative this holiday season by building gingerbread houses. This activity allows students to work on the following skills: shapes, homes, engineering, and teamwork.
Have a great winter break!
First Grade Fun!
First graders continue to show the 3 R’s throughout the school day in order to earn bear bucks to cash out for classroom rewards and our monthly PBS events. In ELA, we have learned how to compare and contrast using a Venn diagram. During center time, we continue to use our “Stretchy the Snake” strategy to stretch out the sounds in words to help us become more confident readers and writers! In Writing, we have begun editing our Personal Narratives. We cannot wait to share them with each other and our families! In Math, students are working very hard counting by tens and ones. We have learned new strategies to make a ten and add the left over ones to make teen numbers. Recently, we started our Economics unit in Social Studies. We are learning about scarcity, producers, consumers, and opportunity cost.
Please be sure to send your child with a jacket as the weather continues to change! For updates on what is happening in the first grade classrooms, follow the first grade teacher's twitter accounts:
Miss Trate- @MissTrate
Mrs. Campanella- @MrsCampanella_
Miss Flowers- @Miss_Flowers109
Miss Dale- @miss_dale
Second Grade Success!
Terrific in Third Grade!
Hello Baltz Families! Your 3rd Graders have been very busy this month! The big event was taking the Smarter Balance practice tests. At the end of 3rd grade the students will have to take the Smarter Balance assessment that is required by the state of Delaware. The students haven’t had any experience with these tests before so this was their chance to get an idea of what to expect. These tests are only for practice so their scores do not affect their grades but it can still be a stressful time for the kids. But we were very impressed with what we saw. The students took the tests seriously and worked very hard on them. It was great to see them rise to the challenge and encouraging to know that they will be ready to go when they count at the end of the year!
Our regular classwork has continued also. In reading we have just finished our 2nd chapter book of the year, Treasure in the Trees. In Math we have moved onto our third unit which covers rounding, place value, and addition and subtraction. The kids will enjoy many fun activities as we approach Winter Break. This isn’t as easy time of year for kids as everyone is so excited but we’re still finding time for learning and fun in the classroom. We wish everyone a happy holiday season and are looking forward to getting started again in 2020!
Fantastic in Fourth Grade!
4th graders have been working hard! In Math, we have been focusing on multi-digit multiplication and using our CUBES strategy to solve word problems. We are becoming very strong in using our Math talk to describe how we solve our problems. In ELA, we have been dissecting our texts and applying comprehension skills such as Fact/Opinion, Compare/Contrast, Inferencing, Drawing Conclusions, and Generalization. In Science we have begun our “Structures of Life” unit where students will investigate properties and characteristics of living things. We are so anxious to come back from winter break because we will be welcoming our crayfish into our classrooms for further investigations and analysis.Lastly, be sure to take some time while baking or riding to relatives homes to practice multiplication facts with your child, it will help them to become more confident and successful in math. We hope you enjoy your winter break and time with your families, Happy Holidays from your Fourth Grade Team!!
Erin Czulewicz, Christina Personti, Brianna Ruiz, Joanna Toto, and Amanda Bestwick.
Fifth Grade Making Moves!
We wish you a happy and safe new year for all of the Baltz families.
Musical Winter!
Parents of 4th and 5th Grade Students,
Are you ready for some AMAZING performances? Here at Baltz, Mr. Adkins, Mr. Peters, and Mr. Schimpf have been diligently working with the 4th and 5th grade string, chorus, and band students to prepare an evening of festive, energetic, and challenging music for our Winter Concert on Thursday, January 16th @ 6:30 pm in the gymnasium.
Students will perform an In-School concert for the students and staff during the day and then present a free evening concert that is open to the public.
Concert Attire for string and band students:
dark pants (black or dark blue jeans or pants) and a white shirt or something nice.
Concert Attire for chorus students:
dark pants (black or dark blue jeans or pants) and a t-shirt (any color) Baltz Blue Chorus Shirt – which will be given to them the night of the concert.
ALL STRING, CHORUS, & BAND STUDENTS NEED TO ARRIVE AT BALTZ BY 6 PM!
We hope to see you there,
The Baltz Elementary Music Faculty: Mr. Adkins, Mr. Peters, and Mr. Schimpf
Congratulations to all of our Brilliant Bear Award Winners from the first round! Keep practicing your 3 R's!
Check out some Breakfast with Santa photos below!
Check out this HOLIDAY EDITION of Sunday Storytime!
Contact/Follow Us
Email: kristen.palma@redclay.k12.de.us
Website: www.redclayschools.com/baltz
Location: 1500 Spruce Avenue, Wilmington, DE, USA
Phone: 302-992-5560
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BaltzBears
Twitter: @KP_BaltzAP