March/April 2008 Update

Mr. Horner          Fifth Grade

Can you believe we are about to have Spring Break?!?!  The month of February was a busy one for 5th grade.  We finished up our school's Modern Woodman Speech contest on American Landmarks.  Congratulations to Elizabeth, Rachel, and Bryson on advancing to the county level.  I am very proud of all the students who participated.  We are still going strong and my class is still working hard and putting forth great individual effort.  We are finishing up WWII and the Holocaust in Social Studies and weather and climate has been our focus in Science.  In Math,
we are dealing with ratios and reciprocals.  I know my class will have a great finish to the year as we enter the last nine weeks.

Mrs. Morell          First Grade

Mrs. Morell's class is moving right along.  We are halfway through our fourth reading book.  Throughout the week, students work on the reading story and around 30 new vocabulary words.  Students have been learning to spell words with ai, ay, ea, oa, and ow.  Each week students are tested over 10 decodable spelling words and 5 sight words.  All students are making lots of progress!   During math class students have been learning to identify and count pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollars. Students have learned to identify the geometric solids spheres and cubes.  We are continuing to practice telling time to the half hour.   Students have learned to name and identify the parts of an egg.  Students made egg models and have read about many oviparous animals and the nesting habits of these animals.  We have also been discussing our  upcoming season of spring.  All students are anxiously awaiting all the changes that spring will bring.   For Read Across America Day, students got to listen to several guest readers and make crafts relating to our stories.  We took a ride on the Reading Express and spent time listening to a story and doing an activity with other teachers in the building.

Mrs. Smelcer         First Grade

We had a great time during Read Across America Day!  We loved coming to school in our pajamas.  We enjoyed our guest readers.  Mrs. Dudash, Mr. Fink and the turtle from English Mountain Water all came and shared books with us.  We ate green eggs and ham and even played goldfish Bingo and enjoyed eating all the goldfish crackers.  We can't wait until Spring Break.  We promise to continue working hard on Reading and on our Math facts when we return.  We think we will be rested then.  Happy Spring!

Mrs. Dobyns         Kindergarten

We have had a great February and beginning to March.  We celebrated Read Across America on March 7.  Everyone wore their pajamas to school and we had lots of fun with books.  We felt so grown up that day because we got to change classes and here other teachers read!  We are very much looking forward to Spring Break and some time off to rest our brains!

Mrs. Barbee         Third Grade

We are so excited to finally have warm weather again!  I can't believe it's time for spring break already, where has the year gone?  We are completing a science unit on forces and motions.   The students are in the process of designing simple machines from Kinex.  This is a challenge, but everyone is doing a great job. We are finishing a writing/research project on the best place to live.  Each student picked a place he/she considers the best place  to live, researched the place using the internet, and wrote a paragraph to describe why their place of choice is such a great place.  The students chose a wide variety of topics, from Egypt to Hawaii and beyond!  We are working very hard to get our multiplication facts memorized. We
spend a lot of time on this at school, but everyone must practice at home, too!   Have a safe and enjoyable spring break!

Mrs. Whitley         Second Grade

Spring Break is just 1/2 day away!  I know the children are looking forward to the break and celebrating both St. Patrick's Day and Easter while at home.  We will miss doing the fun activities associated with those special days.  In the classroom we have learned how to add three 2-digit numbers with sums of greater than 100!    In reading we are almost finished with our 5th out of 6 units in the basal.  During Read-Aloud time, we have really gotten into the Puppy Place books and have read about Noodle and Pugsley.  We will start the Buddy book next.  Reading and spelling skills are getting harder but we do our best!  We enjoyed Read Across America Day.  Everyone, yes even the teacher, spent the day in PJs.  We listen to many guest readers including football players and coaches from Carson-Newman, Mrs. Coley, the Technology trainer for the county, and Mrs. French, our former principal who brought her dog, KatieDee, to go along with the dog book she read.  In the afternoon, the kids were led to different classrooms to listen to another teacher read and to do an activity to go along with their book.  It was really fun and the kids LOVED it!  Second grade presented the March PTO program.  It was titled "People and Places" and was based on book characters and places visited through books.  They were all so cute and wonderful!  Have a Happy Spring, my favorite time of the year! 

Mrs. McMillan       Pre-Kindergarten

We have finished up our study of the five senses.  Did you smell out scented flowers in the hallway?  We also made our own Mr. Potato Head five senses!   We are starting our study on dinosaurs.  We are learning new words like extinct and paleontologist.  we even tried turning our names into dinosaur names.  So, watch out for Ashleysaurus and her little dinos in the halls!

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