Lincoln's December Newsletter
Leading The Pack In Kingsport
December is HERE!!
I hope each of you have a wonderful month enjoying all the activities that are available this time of year. We are always so blessed to work with the students who attend our school. Thank you for your partnership in your child's educational journey at Lincoln.
Friendly Reminders
- Please remember that we do not permit food treats in the classroom for birthday's or "just because". This year we are trying to cut back on the food brought into the building. We are strongly encouraging non food treats if you would like to celebrate your child's birthday in school with their class or if you want to provide something special, just because. Themed pencils, erasers and stickers are favorites of our Lincoln Lions. Another options could be to arrange with the teacher to come in and read your child's favorite book to the class. We appreciate your understanding of this change of procedure that we instituted at the beginning of this year.
- If you are coming to have lunch with your child in our school cafeteria you cannot bring in outside food from a restaurant for you or your child. You are welcome to buy food from the cafeteria and eat what we are serving that day, or bring a lunch from home, but no Subway, McDonald's, Five Guys, or any other food chain. This is a district policy and we want to make sure we are in compliance with the district expectation for the cafeteria.
- If you are coming in to visit your student during the day, beyond lunch, please reach out to the teacher and let them know. We are happy to have parents visit, but it is helpful to us if we know you are coming. Also, know that when you are visiting teachers are not able to stop their teaching to talk to you or have an impromptu conference. We are happy to meet with you about your child but at a scheduled time when the teacher has the time to sit, talk, and honor the questions you have for them about your child's growth.
- 8:15 is the time your child needs to be IN CLASS, not in the lobby. We are seeing an increasing amount of tardy students because they are arriving at 8:14 and can't get to class before the 8:15 bell. We understand how difficult it is to get out of a warm bed on a cold morning but we need students in class on time each day. Thank you for working as a family to get up and out so all students are on time daily.
Important Information For Parents Regarding December Music Performances
On Thursday, December 6, from 6:30-8:00 p.m. we will hold the 3rd annual Lincoln Christmas Art and Music Gala. On this evening, Lincoln Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd graders will show off their Winter themed art work as well as a Christmas song performance! Following each grade levels’ song performance, students will have the opportunity to enjoy the Winter themed art show; a silly Christmas photo booth; snacks and refreshments; a craft with Mrs. LaRue; and fun photo opportunities with Christmas favorites such as Elsa from Frozen, the Grinch, and many more! You will not want to miss it!!!
Student Dress: All students are asked to wear a solid colored red or green t-shirt (No print or logos. Don’t have one? Take a red or green shirt and turn it inside out), clean blue jeans, and tennis shoes for their performance. Christmas Song Performance Times: *Each grade level will perform one Christmas song in the Lincoln Auditorium* on Monday, December 17, the Lincoln 4th grade will be performing their Christmas production entitled “The Holly Jolly Jukebox.” Students have been working diligently on this program since the beginning of October. It will knock your socks off! Please see the event details below: · WHEN IS IT? o Monday, December 17 o 9:30 a.m. STUDENT BODY PERFORMANCE in the Lincoln Auditorium *Students only* o 6:30 p.m. FAMILY and FRIENDS PERFORMANCE in the Lincoln Auditorium *Parents are encouraged to begin planning now to attend the 6:30 p.m. performance. We ask that families begin securing a ride for their children on this evening as soon as possible. Our students have worked so hard in preparing for this performance! We want to make sure they are there to enjoy it!* · WHAT DOES MY CHILD NEED TO WEAR? o Clean blue jeans o Solid red or green t-shirt (No print or logos. Don’t have a solid red or green t-shirt? Find any old red or green shirt and turn it inside out.) o Tennis shoes · WHEN DOES MY CHILD NEED TO BE AT LINCOLN FOR THE PERFORMANCE? o Students will need be in the music room no later than 6:15 p.m. on the evening of the performance for a quick vocal warm-up. Should a parent/guardian have any questions or concerns regarding the Christmas music events, do not hesitate to contact Mr. Wallingford via email at srtwallingford@k12k.com
Grade Level Updates
We are working on the letters A, E, T, M, F, G and counting 1-10. We are learning to count the number of items in a group and recognize numbers. Our names are challenging so we practice those daily. Working on those at home is awesomely helpful! Our new unit just started and STRUCTURES is the name of the game. What does it mean to design and plan? How do we build what we've planned? These are some of the questions we are asking. We are also making predictions about what materials will work for certain structures.
The few snow flakes we saw were very exciting and spurred a discussion about snow balls, especially after reading The Snow Day by Ezra Jack Keats (one of my personal favorites). So, in keeping with that excitement, we decided to have a snowball fight. We talked about what materials we could use. Some of the suggestions were cotton balls, tissues and paper. We gathered these materials, found a big empty space and tested our theories. The conversations, thinking and questions were amazing! Finally, we decided that a balled up piece of paper was the best material. And that's just what we did. We balled up a bunch of paper and we let it rip!!! We had the best indoor snowball fight in the history of indoor snowball fights!
Good stuff is happening in The 303!
Kindergarten
Literacy:
Continue letter recognition and sound
Reading kindergarten sight words (from the list sent home)
Read at home
Math:
Play games using numbers and dice
Addition and subtraction
Social studies:
Past present- children and schools
Holiday traditions
General reminders:
Please have your child wear their reindeer shirts Friday, December 7th and 14th and Thursday, December 20th.
Friday, December 21st will be Pajama Day for kindergarten.
First Grade
First Grade continues to LUNGE FOR LEARNING as we make progress
towards our end of the year goals. Students are working hard each day
and teachers are proud of focused effort and growth. Please remember
your child has homework each day that reinforces what is being taught
and learned in the classroom. Also, the daily homework folder has
important information from the classroom and school. The folder
contains your child’s work samples; please take time each day to review
your child’s work to see the progress being made.
In literacy, we will begin a study on Culture and Traditions. Students
will understand the culture and traditions of a region influence how
people face and overcome challenges. They will write about a character
from texts read to them describing a lesson learned.
For phonics skills, we are focusing on initial (sh-, ch-, th-, wh-) and
final diagraphs (-ck, -sh, -ch, -th). Students will continue to improve
their sentence writing skills using the following rubric: does the sentence
begin with upper case letter then have all lower case letters to follow;
neat and consistent spacing; and an end mark. They should be able to
spell the high frequency words correctly. Our language focus will be
pronouns, conjunctions, and possessive nouns.
In writing, we will continue to improve narrative stories with a beginning,
middle, and end; use dialogue in the plan; use temporal words (one
afternoon, next, after); write 4-7 sentences; and include description
(adjectives) in sentences.
In math, students will understand length using vocabulary shorter,
longer, the same length, and equal to. We will continue to find totals
of two and three quantities, determine if equations are equivalent, and
work with larger numbers up to 120. They will be able to extend the
counting sequence. Students will continue developing an understanding of time to the hour and half hour.
Second Grade
Literacy
In December we will continue to focus on leadership and how citizens develop good leadership skills in order to influence others. We will be reading a variety of informational pieces about leaders of our country in the past. We will also spend two week learning about different cultures and how where you live affects your beliefs, customs and traditions. Students will learn about fairy tales and fantasy.
One of the themes of the stories that we will be reading is about kindness. Students will write an essay explaining how kindness is rewarded in the texts that we read.
We will be celebrating reading Tuesday, December 4. Students that have turned in their calendars with at least 18 days of reading completed will be recognized. Thank you for reading with your child!
We hope that you continue to read over Christmas break. The December goal for reading will be 18 days. Calendars will be due on Tuesday, January 8.
Math
Our classes are starting a new unit about data. Students will be posing questions, collecting information, sorting information, and making representations of data as a way of sharing their findings with others. We will be using picture graphs, bar graphs, Venn diagrams, and line plots.
Encourage your child to explain their math thinking to you. Help your child look for real-world situations in which items are sorted by category.
Christmas Gala
On Thursday, December 6, from 6:30-8:00 p.m. we will hold the 3rd annual Lincoln Christmas Art and Music Gala. Following the song performance, students will have the opportunity to enjoy the winter themed art show; a silly Christmas photo booth; snacks and refreshments; a craft with Mrs. LaRue; and fun photo opportunities with Christmas favorites such as Elsa from Frozen, the Grinch, and many more!
All students are asked to wear a solid colored red or green t-shirt (No print or logos. Don’t have one? Take a red or green shirt and turn it inside out), clean blue jeans, and tennis shoes for their performance.
Students need to be brought to Mrs. Seabolt’s room (Room 104) or Mrs. River’s room (Room 105) no later than 7:15. You may pick your students up after the performance in those rooms.
Important Reminder
We will be going outside for recess as long as the temperature is above 40 degrees. Please send your child dressed for the weather with a coat every day.
Third Grade
This month in math we are focused on Geometry and Measurement. This unit develops students' ideas about attributes of two and three dimensional shapes. Students will also understand and find perimeter and area. Students will describe and classify 2-D figures. We will also be taking the 2nd 9 weeks math benchmark later this month.
In literacy, students continue to practice their reading and writing skills, working on finding and using evidence from texts. The students are asked to use information from a reading passage to write to a prompt ~ they are working hard to learn to form complete and correct sentences and paragraphs to reply to these prompts. We are also studying letter patterns and sounds through our weekly word work; please encourage and support your child in studying these words each week at home. We will be taking a quarterly writing assessment and a 9-week Benchmark assessment during the month of December in order to see how our students are progressing with the 3rd grade standards.
The third grade team would like to wish each of our families a very happy and healthy holiday season!
Fourth Grade
It is hard to believe we are counting down the days to the halfway point in the year. One step closer to being a 5th grader!
We are looking forward to stepping into new concepts and topics in math and science. Students will extensively explore fractions: justifying and creating equivalent fractions, comparing fractions, decomposing fractions, adding and subtracting, using mixed numbers and improper fractions, multiply fractions by a whole number, add decimal fractions, and convert between decimals and fractions. In science, we are jumping into the life science strand to understand the flow of energy between the sun, producers, consumers, and decomposes in a food chain, including photosynthesis.
In the literacy classroom, students are continuing their work on suffixes, character development and plot, making inferences, main idea, and theme. For social studies, we are going to begin learning about the American Revolution and analyze the causes and effects of the Revolutionary War.
Collecting for Leukemia and Lymphoma
Parent Support for Canvas
This course includes the following modules:
- What is Canvas?
- How do Teachers and Students use Canvas?
- How do I use Canvas as a Parent?
- What is the Canvas Parent App?
- Basic information for students.
- What supports are available for my student?
If you are interested in this course, use the following link to access it.