Mrs. Harrell     Speech Pathologist

Speech is up and running! You have 2 new staff members in
speech this year. Ann Harrell is the Speech Pathologist. She is from
Morristown TN. She graduated from the University of TN with her Masters in 1989 and has worked in TN and VA. She recently has been at home with her 2 children Alexandra, 12, and Riley, 9.  Laurie James is the Speech Assistant. She is from Griffin, GA. She has recently moved to Sevierville with her husband Rick. She has 2 boys,
Robby, 25, and Matt, 23. She is adjusting well to the hillbilly life.
 

Mrs. Ogle        Art

Piedmont Elementary Art classes have been working very hard
this year to squeeze in a years worth of lessons before December.  In December the students will have music class instead of art.  It will be great for them to experience music on a regular basis.  
Fifth grade has been improving their drawing ability by learning how the right side of the brain effects artistic abilities.  We are right now in the midst of linear perspective and will work with composition next.   Fourth grade has been studying landscapes and close-up view
 paintings.  We also have learned a great deal about the artist Georgia O'Keeffe.  We have conservation and veterans day poster contests waiting in the wings when we finish our close-up paintings.
Third grade has completed a few little projects about lines and how they can be used to create feelings in a drawing.  They have also completed a crayon etching.  We will continue our study of lines by
 studying the artist Wassily Kandinsky in the upcoming weeks.  
Second grade has been studying shapes and the effects on artworks.  They started the year with a beautiful fall tree 3-D art piece which some are on display at our local Shoney's restaurant and the rest are on display here at school.   First grade has been working with lines and studying Vincent Van Gogh the artist and his style.  They have been working in oil pastels, markers and crayon.  In the up coming weeks we will be working with shapes and how to use them in various ways.   Kindergarten is just beginning on lines and the use of
 materials.  We are starting a wonderfully designed turtle and his surroundings  this week.

Mrs. Morell       First Grade

Mrs. Morell's class has a new addition!  We have Mr. Andy Wilson from Carson Newman as a student teacher.  Students will be sad to see him go in October.   Students have finished the alphabet review and are working on diagraphs and suffix "s" and suffix "ed".  For math, students have been learning how to write a number sentence for a math story.  In science and social studies students have been learning about apples.  Students have graphed their favorite apples, looked at apples under the microscope, labeled the parts of an apple, written posters advertising apples for sale, practiced being  consumers and producers of apples, and planted seeds.

Mrs. Dobyns       Kindergarten

In Mrs. Dobyns class we are having lots of fun learning our letters and writing our numbers.  Our grandparents visited with us in class on September 14.  We sure enjoyed having them in kindergarten for the morning. We have enjoyed reading the stories from our Scott  Foresman Reading Series.  This week we are diving into the "ocean"  for a fun theme on life in the ocean.  In our Saxon math series we have been introduced to several manipulatives such as pattern blocks, teddy bears, and linking cubes.  These hands on materials make math more interesting to five and six year olds who love to touch everything anyway.  Mrs. Dobyns class is great and we are off to a fantastic start.

Mr. Horner       Fifth Grade

Mr. Horner's class is moving right along this year.  We are all working hard and trying our best at becoming the best at Piedmont.   We are enjoying our new Reading series and gearing up for our first unit test.  In Math, we are starting to deal with fractions and  percents.  In English and Writing we are moving into the study of nouns and still working hard at improving our writing skills.  Social Studies has been fun and we are now studying the Industrial Revolution.  Animal growth and heredity are the topics that we are beginning a study on in Science.  Our new year has been fun and interesting and we hope to continue to work hard and grow as
individuals and students.

Mrs. Smelcer       First Grade

We have been so busy learning to read short a, short i and short o
words.  We have also looked at final x and plural s at the end of
words.  We have played a fun frog game in our literacy centers to go
along with these skills.  We drew pictures of real and make-believe
events and put these out in the hall, along with our fall leaves.  We
are discussing character and setting in our stories.  In math, we are
learning our doubles facts, adding one to a number and counting
backwards.  In Science, we have talked about the 5 senses and we are demonstrating each one.  In social studies, we are talking about
events in the past, present, and future.  We are looking forward to
our field trip to Food City, FSG Bank, Pizza Plus, courthouse and the
Field of Dreams.  We are learning two songs to sing while on this trip.
 

Mrs. Garner       Second Grade

Fall is here and we are celebrating cooler weather.  Our flat doll project is beginning to come together.  Please help us get our three stamps and an address where our doll can be mailed.  It will be much more  fun if each person has a traveling doll.   We have just finished  Flat Stanley , which is where the flat doll project originated.   We hope our dolls will start traveling in October.  Next month is also the beginning of Book It!  Each of us has a reading goal.  If we meet that goal, we will get a coupon for a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut.  What a great reward for reading.  In math we are learning our math facts.  Our latest facts are doubles plus one.   We have found that our class is very good in math, but we need lots of practice.   We are telling time to the hour, counting on our meeting master every day, learning to draw pictures for our math stories and enjoying the plus nine trick that Mrs. Garner taught us.  The new reading series has been very interesting so far.  Unit one was about exploring.  We learned about the desert, space, camping and much more.     Boy have we learned a lot about he desert.  We even tasted pickled cactus.  Jeffrey brought us some rocks from the desert in Arizona.  They had many beautiful colors.  We just started unit two which is about working together.  Spelling is giving some of us a little trouble.  We are cheering our words this year to help us learn to spell them.  Please help us practice at home too.  If you sign our folder every weekend, we get a sticker for our behavior chart.  Some of us are on our fifth chart!  Keep in touch so you can find out the latest in Mrs. Garner's class.   

Mrs. Russell       Library

Library classes are busy, busy, busy.  Kindergarteners are working on how to take care of books.  First Grade is focusing on library  manners.  Second graders are beginning a author unit on Tomie De  Paola.  The third grade classes are learning the different parts of the book.  Fourth grade classes have learned the sections of the library and are learning how to make, find, and organize call numbers.  Fifth graders are reviewing the parts of the book and are looking forward to a rousing game of Book Baseball.    Please tell all your friends and family about Piedmont's upcoming fall book fair October 16th through 19th.  We also need adult volunteers for setup on October 11th and clean-up on October 22nd.  See the fair webpage on the school library site.  Hope to see you there!

Mrs. Barbee      Third Grade

We have enjoyed a wonderful start to the school  year. We are very  fortunate to have Miss Miller, a student teacher from Carson-Newman, in our classroom. We have been sharing teaching responsibilities, and it has been great! Miss Miller plans some really fun lessons!   We have enjoyed reading many stories from our new > reading series. One of our favorites was "Penguin Chick", a short story about the lives of penguin chicks in Antarctica.   We are reviewing addition facts in math. Everyone needs to brush up on  these. We are also learning to count money, write fractions, and solve story problems.   We have also completed several different writing projects over the last few weeks. We liked writing friendly letters to a gentleman who provided circus tickets for our classmates and family members.   In science, we are completing a science unit on soils. We have learned about the different types of soils. Miss Miller had us plant bean seeds in sand, loam, and clay soil. We are watching to see which plants grow best.   In social studies, we are doing an overview of the United States. We have talked about our government and some of the landforms that can be found in our country. We will begin to study our country in depth by breaking it  into regions.   Third grade is a lot of fun!

Mrs. Whitley      Second Grade

Grade 2A is one fantastic class this year.  The students have wonderful ideas and are hard workers.  They want to learn and that makes the teacher's job so much easier.  This past month in reading we have continued to explore different areas:  forest, desert, space, and the countryside.  We are now starting Unit 2 whose theme is Working Together.  Our first story is about two faithful dogs who work together to save their master who fell through some ice.   We are learning about the main idea and details, predicting, characters, setting, and sequencing.  We are also learning how to organize our thoughts as we write by using the 4-Square method.  We enjoy math, especially when we get to use manipulatives.  Carly Jo and her mom brought birthday treats which the children (and teacher) enjoyed!  Some students are learning how to do the SRA box and that is challenging.  The computer lab is visited each week and the students are moving right along in the Orchard program.  Certificates will be given at the conclusion of the program.  Ever tasted cactus?  My students were braver than me as each one sampled as I took pictures!

Mrs. Strange     Guidance

Classroom guidance activities for the month of September are centered around the Character Counts word Responsibility.

Mrs. Doan     Kindergarten

Mrs. Doan's kindergarten class has been very busy learning lots of things.  We are learning to read with all the cool books in our new  reading series.  We practice counting every day.  Grandparent's Day  was a lot of fun.  We sang songs and read books for our Grandparents.  They stayed and ate lunch with us.

 

Mrs. West    Second Grade

We are glad to welcome fall!  Last week we learned about how things change in fall.  We chose leaves from different trees and made crayon leaf rubbings and compared the leaves.  We tasted some yummy apple cider.  We studied "tree cookies".  We counted the rings to find the age of the tree.  We also saw rings that were wider, which means there was more rain that season.  Some parts were brown and diseased while other parts showed skinny rings meaning less rain.  In math we have learned that doubles plus one math facts are simple when you know that the numbers are neighbors on the number line.  We  love to teach our family new math terms like... the commutative property, polygons, sums, addends, and differences.  Did you know that a noun can be a person, place, animal or a thing?  We play a fun spelling game called sparkle to practice our spelling words.  It is a game of skill and luck.  Have you ever eaten cactus?  We tasted some prepared cactus in our classroom.  Yum!  We liked it.  It was very tasty.  We read a story about the desert.  We learned many interesting facts about life in a habitat that is very different than ours.