Brilliant Bear Bulletin
Baltz Elementary School * November 2018 * Volume 2
BALTZ
Believing
Achieving
Learning and
Team Building with
Zeal (Great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or objective)
School News
New Outdoor Classroom!
On Wednesday, October 3, 2018, Baltz Elementary School celebrated the opening of our outdoor classroom! Complete with a ribbon cutting ceremony by the classroom’s creator, Jack Morris, students and staff welcomed the new learning environment.
Jack Morris, a junior at Salesianum High School, has been involved with the Boy Scouts since a young age. He is working towards becoming an Eagle Scout and needed to complete a project for the community. He attended Brandywine Springs School and wanted to give back to Red Clay School District. He reached out to all the Principals and Ms. O’Neil jumped at the opportunity to work with him. Together they developed the idea of the outdoor classroom.
As part of the project, Jack had to plan, organize, and raise funds to complete it. He planned and organized a Spaghetti Dinner and talked to local businesses. Businesses who supported and donated to the project were Serpe’s Bakery, Shone Lumber, and Copeland’s Mulch Depot. With the funds and donations, he was able to create a comfortable outdoor learning environment for the students and teachers and provide funds to help maintain the area.
Jack, with the support of his family and his Scout Troop, were able to complete the build of the outdoor classroom over a weekend. There are stumps for the students to sit on, a white board on a stand, and chair for the teachers to sit in. The area is located under a large tree and has a mulch base to signify the area.
The students and staff at Baltz, thank Jack for all of his planning and hard work on this project! It will be enjoyed for many years to come!
A Closer Look at Close Reading
Part I - What is Close Reading?
To put it simply, close reading is a way of digging deeper into text. With the implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS), students are no longer expected to read text just for basic understanding of information and events. They are now expected to read, and reread, in order to analyze and gain a deep understanding of text, so that they can explain it, discuss it, and ask and answer questions using evidence from the text.
For example, read the following lyrics of the well-known children’s song, “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”:
The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain;
And the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.
Before the implementation of CCSS, students would have been expected to answer questions like, “Which words are synonyms for itsy-bitsy?” To answer, the student would simply choose words that mean the same as itsy-bitsy from a given list of words. Since the implementation of CCSS, students are expected to answer questions like, “Choose two adjectives that describe the spider. What evidence from the text supports your choices?” To complete this task, students must evaluate the spider in order to choose appropriate adjectives, then find evidence (proof) in the text that supports their evaluation.
This is just one example of the increased complexity of the questions that students are now expected to answer. To meet these new challenges, students must begin to change the way they read and process information in text. In Part II, we will suggest ways that parents can start to promote that change at home. In the meantime, please continue to encourage your children to READ, READ, READ!
-The Reading Specialist Team
Unified Arts/Specials
Students at Baltz love to code! This year students will participate in The Hour of Code, which is a global event where students from around the world join millions of other students and explore the world of code. The event takes place during Computer Science Week, December 3-9, 2018. All grade levels will participate in some way. Students will learn about careers in computer science, code vocabulary and how to give directions to get a fuzzball or an Angry Bird to move through a maze. Students love to show their skills as problem solvers and creators. Remember to look for a parent letter during the first week of December and ask your student to show you what they know about coding.
Susan Eveland
Technology Education
Kindergarten
Our super learners in Kindergarten have been working so hard starting their year of Kindergarten. They have been learning lots of new sight words as well as letters and letter sounds, and beginning sounds of words. Our students have also been learning to count objects and tell which numbers are more and which are less. They have been making groups of numbers 1-5 and learning how to use some fun math tools that we have! We have started to send home weekly homework to practice Letter naming, Letter sounds, and soon sight words and math practice as well! Be on the lookout in your child’s red folder!
Be on the lookout soon for a field trip permission slip. We have started to learn about Trees in our Science Kits and we are going on a Field Trip soon that has to do with this theme so we can learn more about them out in nature.
First Grade
Fantastic First Grade
We have been filling up buckets and showing kindness to everyone! Our classroom communities are showing the 3 R's wherever they go! First graders are learning many new skills and continuing to build on those skills every day. During reading, students are learning new phonics skills weekly to become fluent readers. This past month we learned all our short vowel sounds and worked with blends too. In math, we are working with partners of numbers up to 10 and getting very good at creating equations. First graders are also busy learning grammar skills, practicing handwriting, and working on listening comprehension. During science we have been graphing our weather with a meteorologist of the day!
For updates on what is happening in the first grade classrooms, follow the first grade teachers' twitter accounts:
Miss Trate- twitter.com/MissTrate
Miss Cherico- twitter.com/MissCherico
Miss Flowers- twitter.com/Miss_Flowers109
Mrs. Whiteside- twitter.com/MrsEWhiteside
Second Grade
2nd graders continue to work very hard! We enjoy building our classroom communities by starting each day with a Morning Meeting. We have become more comfortable around each other and it has helped us really get to know each other and work more collaboratively. Students have now finished Unit 1 in Reading and have worked very hard in small focused Reading groups and independently with the Reading centers. The quality of the reading and written work has already improved!
In math, we are finishing Unit 1. Students have been working hard on word problems and have continued to work on math fluency. We have focused not only on accuracy, but also on really demonstrating understanding by showing how we got the answer.
All 2nd graders should be reading at home….every day! The best way for these kiddos to become better readers is if they read, read, read…and read some more!!
Please follow us on Twitter!
Ms. Fuentes: https://twitter.com/missfuentes_213
Mrs. Klink: https://twitter.com/Klink215
Mrs. Mauchin: https://twitter.com/mrsmauchin
Mrs. Simmons: https://twitter.com/AndreaOReilly6
Third Grade
Hello Baltz Families,
Fall is here and we are leaving the “get to know you” activities and all the short weeks from September behind. October is a long month with a lot of 5 day weeks and we have been hard at work. In Math we are continuing our work on multiplication and division. We just learned the 3’s and 4’s and will be covering the 1’s and 0’s next. We have also introduced the concept of finding the Area of a shape which you may have seen on your child’s homework. That will continue to be a focus as we move forward, along with word problems. One of our biggest focuses all year in Math will be solving word problems, with the most important skill being correctly choosing what operation, add, subtract, multiply, or divide, should be done.
In Reading we have started Unit 2 of our reading series. This unit will have stories focused around smart ways to solve problems. We will be working on the skills of Main Idea, Author’s Purpose, Drawing Conclusions, and Context Clues. Please try to read with your kids as much as possible when they are home. Some sample questions you could ask after you read that tie in with what we’re doing in class would be: what was that story mostly about, why do you think the author wrote that story, what would be another good title for that story, and why do you think the character did ______. Thank you for all of your help and support this year and if you ever have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us!
Sincerely,
The Third Grade Team
Fourth Grade
Happiness and success comes in waves in Fourth Grade!!
Fourth grade teachers and students are embracing our new Ready Gen reading series by digging deep into our stories. Students are applying critical thinking skills to their understanding and using their strategies of context clues with vocabulary. Students are also becoming confident in locating supportive evidence from the story and applying it to their daily activities. In math, we are moving into subtraction with regrouping, subtraction with large numbers, and then moving on to comparing addition and subtraction. We will then move in to two step problems. Students will apply their “CUBES” strategies to help with problem solving. In writing, we are continuing to work on cursive, our biographies, and will be applying grammar skills along with antonyms and synonyms. In Science we are beginning our “Structures of Life” kit, which examines living things such as plants using fruit and seeds, crayfish using habitats and territories, and analyzing bess beetles on their characteristics and behaviors. In Social Studies we are will be moving into the land settlements of Indians and the struggles they encountered. Fourth Grade will welcome Kalmar Nyckel to our school as they present, “Starting A Colony” which will introduce students to Economics.
Lastly, here are some friendly reminders:
Students should be reading and practicing their basic multiplication and division facts nightly.
Sweatshirts and sweaters should be solid color and not have hoods.
Please make sure your child has a book bag every day. If your child needs one please contact their teacher and we can get one for you.
Doors open at 8:25am and dismissal begins at 3:50pm
We thank you for your continued support, and if you ever have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.
Sincerely,
Ms. Toto, Mrs. Harmeson, Ms. Personti, and Ms. Ruiz
Fifth Grade
Our Fifth Grade Brilliant Bears are working very hard and learning many new things. We had a wonderful time at the Franklin Institute. The students learned many exciting things and were very eager to share their experience. Thank you to all the parents who volunteered on this trip. We are so grateful that you took the time to share in this wonderful day with our students.
It is hard to believe that we are already in the second marking period of school. As we progress through the next few marking periods the students will be tasked with taking on more responsibility for their learning. Fifth grade is a transition year between elementary school and middle school. Therefore, it is important for all of us to help our students foster more independence. Our focus will continue in the areas of reading comprehension, math computation and solving word problems. The students will be exposed to more reading that will enrich their literary experience and assist them with reading to be informed. They will also continue to be challenged in the areas of Math, Science and Social Studies.
Please continue to encourage your student to read every night and practice multiplication facts. Thank you for your ongoing support. It is truly appreciated.
Sincerely,
The Fifth Grade Team
Ms. Hattley, Mrs. Loughrey, Mrs. Munoz, & Mrs. Watkins
Follow Us Online!
Email: amy.oneill@redclay.k12.de.us
Website: https://de01903704.schoolwires.net/baltz
Location: 1500 Spruce Avenue, Wilmington, DE, USA
Phone: 302-992-5560
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BaltzBears/
Twitter: @baltzbears