My Smore newsletter
Nurse
Flu season is upon us. Please consider receiving the flu vaccine to protect yourself, family members, and others. Don’t forget to vaccinate your children also!
Lions Club Vision Screening: A letter with more information on their visit for October 3 will be in your student’s folder. If your student wears eye glasses, please be sure they have them on this day. Thank you!
Sadzakov
1st
We are off to a great start in First Grade! We have many fun and exciting things happening in our classrooms. Our team has greatly enjoyed getting to know your kids and building relationships with them. We have worked hard to establish our expectations, routines and procedures in our classrooms. With that said, we cannot believe we are more than half way through the first nine weeks.
Here are our happenings in our classrooms:
We have laid the foundation for Reading Workshop by Launching the Reading Workshop. Students have learned how to pick just-right books, how to pick a reading spot and quietly read to build their stamina and distinguishing good reading habits from negative reading habits.
In Writing Workshop we have Launched the Writing Workshop by examining different types of books to see different writing styles; we have created lists of where we see writing and topics that we can write about. We are now working on small moment stories in our narrative writing unit. Students are writing stories based off personal experiences. And, boy, do our First Graders have many experiences to write about!
In Math Workshop we have worked on Geometry with identifying shapes and attributes of shapes. We have worked on fractions in which students have to recognize and divide shapes into halves and fourths. We have worked on horizontal and vertical graphing with various topics. As a class we created graphs and students would have to read and interpret the data.
Our First Graders have also learned about patterns and how we see patterns in our everyday lives. We are currently working on Measurement. Students are learning how to put items in order from shortest to longest and how to measure items in non-standard units. We will soon move on to word problems, in which students will have to read a word problem and decide if they are adding or subtracting. RTI (Response to Intervention) has begun for the year and students are grouped based upon their Fall MAP scores. This helps us focus on the specific needs of your children. RTI is from 7:55 to 8:30 daily.
In Social Studies we have worked on rules at home, school and laws in the community. We have learned about Community Helpers and Transportation and Communication in the past versus today. We are learning how to read maps and how to use a map scale, as well as children of other countries.
We soon will start our Science unit for this nine-weeks, which will be Lights and Shadows. Students will learn that we need light to see and how shadows are formed. We have many hands-on activities that students will do to enhance their understanding of Lights and Shadows.
Things to do at home: Please make sure your child is reading their guided reading book nightly and has their reading log signed. Also, make sure you are signing their behavior calendar nightly.
Work with your students on the Kindergarten and First Grade sight words. You can play games with these words to help students learn how to spell them. Students need to know to spell all 43 Kindergarten sight words at this time and know how to spell all 116 1st Grade sight words at the end of the year.
Lastly, please work with your child on how to tie their shoes at home and how to write their last names.
2nd
Thank you for your continued support and help in completing homework assignments. We are off to a great start!
3rd
Third grade is off to a great start!
We have jumped right in to learning about our Palmetto State, its regions and river systems, and major cities. We will also begin to learn about Native Americans, the first people to live in South Carolina, and the European explorers. We will study the conflict and cooperation between these groups as South Carolina was settled.
Our students have been crafting true stories about “small moments” in their lives as we work through our first writing unit on narrative writing. We are really getting to know each other through these writings. Students have been encouraged to have a clear beginning, middle, and ending, to include dialogue, and to have a strong lead to be sure the reader is engaged.
As our reading skills focus, we have been comparing and contrasting texts and analyzing point of view through the use of trade books. Students are also learning how to choose "just right" books for independent reading on their own levels. Reading at home each day is extremely important!
Students are having a blast as we all discover "What's the Matter?” Matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. The students are learning that matter is all around them! They are enjoying being able to sort all types of matter into one of the three major states: solids, liquids, and gases. Students will apply their knowledge of these three states to learning how matter can change, or be changed, from one state to another! Be sure to have your child find out “What’s the Matter?” around your home!
In Math, we are finding our "place" through learning about place value, as well as rounding to the nearest ten or hundred. Students have been able to practice telling time and finding elapsed time on digital and analog clocks in their RTI groups. We find that having "number sense" makes a lot of sense!
Your help is needed! Please remember to initial your students’ reading log and agenda if required by his/her teacher. Thank you for all you do to support your child’s education!
5th
We would like to thank Outbreak Church, parents, students, and all of our Mount Holly Family for supporting the Fish Fry Fundraiser on September 22. We served 485 meals. Thank you to Outbreak Church for supporting this event by organizing the caterer and drinks, donating the facility and providing so many wonderful volunteers to prepare and serve the delicious food. Student volunteers helped with cleaning tables, refilling drinks, bagging to go orders and filling up the food trays when needed. The bake sale was a success as well, and we thank the parents who donated baked goods and/or worked the table for their time. Thank you as well for all the families that donated drinks for the event. These efforts will support many students’ attendance to Washington, D.C.
In our classrooms, we have been doing a lot of learning. In social studies, we are finishing up our study on the Reconstruction Period in the next week or two and will soon be moving West. Science “matters” as we learn more about Mixtures and Solutions and their properties. Math has focused on perimeter, area, and volume, and we will soon start to revisit place value and how it applies to powers of 10. In English Language Arts, we will begin working on inferencing and quoting text as well as narrative writing along with writing our essays for the Fire Essay Contest.
Guidance
I cannot believe it is already October! Classroom guidance this year started with lessons educating students on why I work at their school and how they could come see me if they need anything. After learning about a school counselor’s job, we jumped right into learning about school success skills. These lessons spanned from kindergarten to fifth, and we discussed various topics such as good listening skills, staying on task, perseverance, organization skills and study habits. My hope is that our students will utilize these skills and strategies for the entire year to help them do their very best in school and accomplish a lot of great things!
Mark your calendars for Red Ribbon Week, which will be October 23rd – October 26th. Red Ribbon Week is an initiative to educate students on making healthy choices and staying drug free. We will celebrate with dress up days, contests, prizes, and a fundraising event for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Look out for more information in the communication folders in the coming weeks!
This year is off to a great start and I look forward to even more fun and exciting things ahead. If you have any concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kaci Kawakami
School Counselor
Email: kkawakami@rhmail.org
Office: 803.985.1668
Art
Mount Holly welcomes Ms. Tia Drew in her internship with Ms. Ham and her students in the Art program. Ms. Drew is a Winthrop student in the Art Education program and aspires to be an Art teacher. What an awesome opportunity it is for her and for Mt. Holly during this experience. She will be at Mount Holly each Friday this semester.
Mount Holly art work will be on display at the Center for the Arts in downtown Rock Hill as part of the Annual Fall Elementary Art exhibit. The exhibit will run from mid-October through mid-November. Specific dates and exhibit artists will be announced once they have been confirmed.
Please keep in mind of possible recyclables you might donate to the Art classroom. These include, but are not limited to, magazines, phone books, old crayons, plastic lids, coffee cans, and baby wipe containers.
Media Center
The fall book fair has come to Mount Holly, it will run from September 24th through October 1st. The book fair is open to all during school hours. If you can’t make it in to the book fair then visit our online book fair which runs till October 2nd. All books ordered online will be delivered to the school. To access our online book fair go to http://www.scholastic.com/bf/mthollyelementaryschool1
Also come this October the library will be running the Book It Reader program, where students can win a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut for reading. They can win one coupon per month, the contest runs from October to March.
Music
Well the Music Room is definitely alive! From our new Kindergartners to the oldest 5th grader, we have been making music. In kindergarten and first grade we are studying all about steady beats and how important they are to music. We have listened to , danced to and made steady beats. In second grade, we are learning more about Orff instruments and having the opportunity to play them. If you aren’t familiar with what “Orff” instruments are, they are the xylophones, metallophones and glockenspiels. Still don’t know? Ask your child. Third through fifth grade have been also playing Orff instruments.
Fourth and fifth graders that want to audition for a part in our spring musical will have the opportunity to begin signing up for auditions the first week of October. ALL auditions will be during school hours. Practices, however, are after school and some weekends. This is a very exciting time around the music room. It’s all abuzz about what part to audition for. I encourage you to encourage your child to be a part of this great opportunity. Be on the look out for a letter coming home in the next few days with all the information.
If you have talents that you’d like to share with us, please let me know. I’d love for our students to see parents using their talents, as well. In order to make our musical a success, we will need painters, seamstresses, builders, and who knows what else. If you’d like to be a volunteer for something, please just let me know.