January/February 2008 Updates

Mr. Horner      Fifth Grade

Mr. Horner's fifth grade is gearing up for some exciting events in the coming months.  We have been working on science fair projects for two or three weeks now and they seem to be doing a good job.  We are also down to our last week before the writing test and they have been focusing and working hard.  We are also about to start our speeches for the Modern Woodman Contest.  The students just finished writing a book and will send it off to get it published.  They worked really hard and they were very creative with their ideas, illustrations, and stories.  We started planning for our trip to Camp Explore at the end of February and will hopefully have a good time while doing  some hands-on activities that will enhance our knowledge of science.
 

In Mrs. Dobyns' kindergarten class we are moving quickly through our study of the letters.  We are already blending letters together and are reading lots of words and some short books.  We celebrated the 100th day of school by changing classrooms and having a different activity in each room.  We made cute caterpillar headbands. We had to put them in order counting by 10's to 100.  We wore them to the cafeteria for lunch.  See how great we look!

Mrs. Morell's class is moving right along in reading.  We are halfway through our third reading book.  Students have been studying subject-verb agreement, suffixes, and several new decodable sounds.  Students are also memorizing about 7 sight words a week.  They are memorizing a spelling list of around 15 words for each week.  In math, students have been working on counting to 100 by odd and even numbers.  They are also counting mixed money (dimes and pennies).  Students have been learning to tell time to the half hour.  They have been working on writing story problems for number sentences.  During the month of January, students have been learning about winter.   Students have been learning about weather that corresponds to this season.  Students also learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s important contribution to our country.

Pre-K has been going strong since we have returned from our winter break.  We started back the new year with a literature unit on Chicken Soup with Rice by Maurice Sendak. Our studies continued with emphasis on Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. in honor of all the tremendous contributions he has made to this country. We can all say his full name and name at least 3 contributions he made while he was alive. This interest sparked us to continue on with books that focused on African American characters, such as stories by Ezra Jack Keats. There are many different cultures represented in our classroom, our school, and our communities. Wow...where will go next?

It's update time already?  Where is the school year going?  Students are working hard in all areas.  In our Word Study block, we have learned how to spell over 85 high frequency words.  These words must always be spelled correctly when we write since they stay on the wall all year where we can easily see them.  All our spelling words are based on skills we have learned in Phonics.  During the Self-Selected Reading block we choose books from the shelf that we can also take Accelerated Reading tests on.   Mrs. Whitley is reading Noodle, a book about a little puppy that was found struggling in a pond when he broke through the ice.  When finished, we will write a summary of the story in our journal.  That is an important comprehension skill we are working on.  We are almost experts now at adding two two-digit numbers with regrouping.  In science we have learned about life cycles of the pumpkin, frog, butterfly, and grasshopper.  We also learned that ALL living things have a life cycle.  A class book on our favorite pets is in progress and we will begin illustrating it this week.  It will be a published book!  Our children will  be published authors!  We will soon learn about the Chinese New Year and we are all anticipating Valentine's Day!

Mrs. West’s class just got back from a Christmas Holiday around the world.  We visited England, Germany, Italy, and Mexico.  We each had different favorite countries.  We have learned to subtract two from an even number and an odd number.  Do you know what the trick is?  If you subtract two from an even number, the answer will be the even number before it.  If you subtract two from an odd number, the answer will be the odd number before it.  We have learned to spice up our writing with adjectives.  Adjectives are words that describe nouns.  They make writing more interesting.  Here are some examples:  Today I wore a short pink skirt.  Thomas is wearing a green and brown camouflage outfit.  Ashlynn has long blonde hair.  Our class is working on a special project.  We will publish our own class book.  The title of the book is Frogs Got Loose in Piedmont School!  These frogs take over the school.  They are found in the bathroom, the teacher’s hair, the lunchroom, the mashed potatoes, and the computer lab.  If you come to our room we would love for you to read our stories.  It has been super fun writing our silly frog stories.  They are sprinkled with lots of adjectives and adventure!  Watch out for those Piedmont frogs!

We are very excited in Mrs. Doan's class to have a student teacher, Miss Oney.    She is from Carson-Newman College.  Miss Oney is doing a wonderful job teaching our class.  We are so excited about reading and writing.  We have learned how to sound out words and we know a lot of popcorn words, so it is getting easier to read and write.  We just celebrated the 100th day of school.  It was fun visiting the other kindergarten teachers and doing fun things in their rooms.  Most of our students can count to 100 by ones and by tens!!  This is us on the 100th day with our caterpillar headbands.

Mrs. French's class has been learning mixed numbers in Math. We are learning about plants and animals in Science. We have enjoyed doing Art in Science to learn the parts of a flower, seeds, and cells.  In English and writing, the students are learning to write stories, using five or six paragraphs. I am proud of the way their writing has improved and matured.  The students are excited about the books that they have written and are going to have published.
 

Mrs. Smelcer      First Grade

We are excited to be back in the swing of things for the new year. We would like to see some snow!!! We have been reading stories about how things change - the weather, our size, our abilities, etc. Come and check out our writing in the hall about how we have changed since we were a baby. Our P.T.O. program went great and we enjoyed learning all the new songs for it about what we do in first grade. In Math, we are learning to add 10 to a number, adding money and we are getting ready to count nickels.  In Social Studies, we learned about Chinese New Year and made a puppet of a dragon. In Science, we learned about changes in the weather and about all four seasons.

Mrs. Harell      Speech

In speech the young kids k-1 are learning new winter words like igloo, iceberg, snowdrift, parka, penguin, walrus, snowmobile, polar bear, seal.  The older kids 2-3 are working on synonyms for things like building a snowman - stone-rock, hat-cap, stick- branch; sled riding, ice skating,
and snowball fighting. The older kids work brain buster  puzzles, do grammar rock and earobics on the computer; and play games like slamwich, Swap, Scrabble and Tower of Terror.  The children in the Special Needs preK are learning sign language as well as many new weather words and transportation words. Lets don't forget that next week we will start learning all about Valentine's Day.

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