Gregory Drive Elementary

Transcription

1 Gregory Drive Elementary Ms. Schletter, Principal January 13, 2017 In This Issue: 1 Principal s Corner 1 Vision and Mission 1 PTA Press 2 Calendar of Events 2 SAC 2 Dolphins of the Month 3 Inside our Classrooms 4 Inside the Drive CLIP AND SAVE Classes will compete to see who can bring in the most Box Tops. Start saving them today! * * * Check your child s planner daily for general information. * * * Gregory Drive Mission and Vision Vision: Gregory Drive is a place where all students are encouraged and committed to strive for excellence in a safe, supportive atmosphere. Dear Parents and Guardians, Ms. Hartigan, Assistant Principal As we move into the 3 rd quarter, our level of urgency has escalated. It is go time! Please ensure that students are here daily and on time. Doors to the school open at 8:00 a.m. There is no adult supervision before 8:00 a.m. Students are not to be on campus before 8. Please aim to have your students get on campus around 8:15 a.m. - 8:20 a.m. each day. Please reiterate behavior expectations with your children. We expect all Gregory Drive students to be safe, responsible, and respectful. We do not tolerate threats or violence. Please remind them that they are here to learn. With testing coming up quickly, students need to be attentive every minute they are here. We cannot waste a second of learning time for behavior issues. Please continue to have your child sign onto i-ready or Achieve every night. We can get you the log in information if needed. In order for them to get the most benefits from the program, they should be on for at least 45 minutes and pass each lesson with at least an 80 the FIRST time. We have purchased a program called Reflex Math for every child in the school. This computer program will help students with math fluency. It is a fun online game to help master math operations. Have students log in frequently at reflexmath.com. Happy New Year! Sincerely, Mrs. Schletter Parent Teacher Association (PTA) Next meeting: January 24, 4:00pm Please join us at this meeting. We are in need of a secretary and treasurer! If you are interested, please let us know. Mission: Gregory Drive Elementary, a caring and collaborative learning community, ensures that each student achieves intellectually through integrating math, science and technology across all academic areas. Check out our School Website! Duvalschools.org/GDE Follow us on: #WeAreGregoryDrive

2 School Advisory Council SAC is made up of parents, staff, business partners, and citizens in the community. Anyone interested in joining SAC should contact the main office. The Council meets 8 times a year. The Next meeting: January 4:00 p.m. in the conference room Welcome baby Jackson to the Dolphin family! Mrs. Jackson s son is 7 lbs 13 oz and 21.5 inches long! Calendar of Events January 16- MLK Day, No School January 17- School Advisory Council (SAC), 4:00 Kinder Awards Ceremony, 9:00 January 18-1 st Grade Awards, 9:00 am January 19-2 nd Grade Awards, 9:00 am January Literacy Week (See Literacy Week box) January 23-3 rd Grade Awards, 9:00 am January 24- Multicultural Day; PTA meeting 4:00- join us! January 25-4 th Grade Awards, 9:00 am and Early Release Day January 26- Family Literacy Day, 9:00 am January 27-5 th Grade Awards, 9:00 am January 31-1 st Grade Field Trip Literacy Week Dolphins of the Month! Kindergarten- Carnell Smith 1 st Grade- Kenyon Percy 2 nd Grade- Kenneth Gamble 3 rd Grade- Jasiah Ordonez 4 th Grade- Cierra Cross 5 th Grade- Michelle Valazquez Monday- Drop Everything and Read 1:30-2:00 every student kicks off their goal with independent reading in classroom Tuesday- Celebrity Reading Day- special guests will be reading to our students. Wednesday- Read It Forward Jax Book Swap/Drive/Block Party. Bring a book to swap for another book. Thursday- Family Literacy Day, come and enjoy breakfast and read with to your child at 9:00 am. Friday- Teachers read, too! Teacher read-a-loud of his/her favorite book (or part of book). Teacher- Ms. White Staff Member- Ms. Choate January 24 th our school will celebrate the diverse cultures of our world. Each class will study a country and present on the 24 th for the rest of the school.

3 Kindergarten: ELA: Culture of the Lakota Sioux, Wampanoag, and Lenape tribes of the Native Americans. We will be making cultural comparisons to our lives now. Math: We are learning about comparing using terms, same as, fewer, more than, and enough. We are working on starting sprints to improve our agility. Science: We are talking about forces, such as push and pull and gravity. We also have a field trip on 1/24 to the JCA to see a play called Coming to America. First Grade: Blasting off into Astronomy, learning about our Universe! and finding out about gravity... what keeps us in place. In math we are learning about place value and various strategies to solve story problems. Get on Reflex Math and i-ready as much as you can at home. Continue to work on I-ready at home and school and of course, read, read, read everything. We have an upcoming field trip to MOCA on January 31st. Second Grade: Reading: At this time, we have finished Module 5 The War of In Module 5 we focused on main topic or main idea. Main topic means what the story or text is all about. We also focused on describing the connection between historical events by looking for cause and effect relationships. We look forward to learning about the four seasons of weather and describing the connections between seasons and animal life cycles in Module 6. Writing: Students practiced writing an opinion and supporting an opinion with reasons and details. Please continue to encourage your child to check his or her work and write with capital letters, punctuation, and sentences that make sense. Next we will be reading and writing poetry. Social Studies: We will continue to focus on gathering details from images (illustrations, photographs, charts, maps, diagrams) and text-features in order to gather more information about the text. Math: We have been practicing strategies for decomposing tens and hundreds and strategies for adding and subtracting two-digit numbers. Science: We are enjoying learning about matter.

4 Important reminders: Literacy Week is coming soon! Remind your child to read for 20 minutes and log books to earn a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza coupon. Your child received a book log during winter break. Also, remember to do some i-ready lessons nightly. Third Grade: We hit the ground running as soon as we returned from winter break. Learning is taking place every day in preparation for the upcoming FSA. Please be sure your child is at school and on time. We begin learning promptly after breakfast. This month, third grade students will be working on... Math: Multiplication and division using multi-step problems and solving for the unknown. They will also be using multiplication to help solve area. Science: We are wrapping up energy and students will complete their robot projects. Language Arts: We are finishing out our unit on frogs. As we learn about frogs, we are working on main idea, finding key details, comparing and contrasting across texts, and reading a text closely. We also are working on how to write an informational paragraph. Your child should be completing homework daily. Achieve 3000, iready, and Reflex Math are great tools your child can use at home. It is highly recommended that your child is completing activities on these websites at home in order to help them be successful in class. Please continue to work on multiplication fluency (knowing multiplication facts quickly). Students should be reading daily for at least minutes in order to build up reading stamina. Thank you so much for all you do for the success of your child! Fourth Grade: It is hard to believe that we are more than half-way through the school year. Time flies! Be sure to check the agenda for homework assignments and conduct grades. Now would be a great time to set up a parent conference if you have concerns about your child s progress. We will soon begin a text study using a historical fiction book called The Hope Chest. The character in the story learns about the fight for women s rights as the story progresses. We will identify with events that cause the character to change. This is an exciting literary text! Our writing is moving along. We are continuing to write opinion writing pieces. We are choosing our opinions on a topic. We are reading and annotating text, then using text details to support our opinions. Our writing should include four paragraphs, with an introduction, two body

5 paragraphs, and a conclusion. We are looking closely at word choice, transitions and paragraph organization. It is a lot to take in, but we are up to the task! When do you use fractions? Fractions are our focus in math for quite a while. Students will recognize equivalent fractions. They will need to compare fractions and put them in order from least to greatest. They will add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions. (And don t forget to reduce the fractions to lowest terms) Now that s a lot of fractions! So please take the time to share some of the fractions you use on a daily basis with your child. We are continuing to work on motion in science! We will identify speed and velocity. Students will learn about gravity and friction. We will even experiment with potential and kinetic energy. There are so many great examples around us each day. Motion really moves us! Remember that parents who are interested in chaperoning any field trip must have a current volunteer form completed. Just come by the school or log in to DCPS. The application process is quick, but results can take a week. Hope to see you soon! Fifth Grade: ELA- In this module, Sports and Athletes Impact on Culture we will begin with a brief study of the importance of sports in American culture over time. The heart of this module is a whole class study of the biography Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America by his daughter, Sharon Robinson. Students will analyze Jackie Robinson as a specific example of an athlete who served as a leader who broke barriers in society. They will also begin to study argumentative writing, analyzing how the author Sharon Robinson provides evidence to support her opinions. Students will develop their understanding of the cultural context in which these athletes competed and the barriers these athletes broke during the times in which they lived. Students will build their research skills by reading biographical articles and other informational texts. They also will continue to build their skills to write arguments based on multiple sources, focusing on crafting clear opinions and providing sufficient reasons and evidence. In math, we are diligently understanding fractions as division and moving toward multiplying and dividing fractions. Please continue to work on I-Ready Math at home. In Science, we are digging deep into learning Earth Science. We are currently learning how to identify rocks and minerals. We enjoyed our recent trip the Marine Science Center in Mayport. Please continue to have your child work on Penda at home.