Abraham Lincoln Elementary School Newsletter January 2018 Important Dates January 1-2 No School Winter Break January 8 Early Release 2:10 pm PTO Meeting 5:30pm Board of Education Meeting 7:00 pm January 15 Early Release 2:10pm January 22 Early Release 2:10pm Board of Education Meeting 7:00 pm January 29 Early Release 2:10pm Family Math & Science Night 6:00-7:30pm Reminders It is very important that you continue to make sure your students are in school every day and on time. Please remember that we have no outside supervision until 7:40, so do not send your children to school until after 7:45 A.M. Another important reminder is that there is no entering the upper or lower parking lots during arrival or departure times. We have posted signs on the lower lot that state that the lower lot will be closed during school days. As always, please drive slow and watch out for children. Please make sure your child has a hat, coat, mittens, snow pants and boots when they come to school. Students are outside daily. Please be sure to label each of these items with your child's name as well. 4 Year Old Kindergarten News Welcome 2018! We had an amazing gingerbread house making day. Thank you for all of your help with the gingerbread houses. We are continuing to learn many things in 4K. We will also start focusing on writing our names the school way (a capital letter at the beginning and lowercase letters for the rest of the name). Identifying the letters in your child s name and practicing to write their name would be something great for you to practice at home. Please remember to send your child in warm clothes, as we try to get outside to play as much as possible. Please make sure that your child has snow pants, coat, hat, mittens/gloves, and boots and LABEL EVERYTHING WITH YOUR CHILD S NAME. Keep reading your child s newsletter for information about what happens in class and about upcoming events.
PAGE 2 ABRAHAM LINCOLN JANUARY 2018 Kindergarten News This month the kindergarteners traveled around the world and studied how different countries celebrate the holidays. We went to Mexico, Italy, Germany, and more! We made a lot of interesting projects and had some fun experiences! We also decked the halls and classrooms out in Christmas! In reading this month we continued to work on pre-reading skills or superpowers such as Eagle Eye, Fish Lips, Tryin Lion, Stretchy Snake, and Careful Caterpillar. We have been practicing using all our powers at once to become the best readers! Our month in math was full of new games and skills. We really enjoyed experimenting with our new math tool, the calculator! We even know what the symbols on some of the buttons stand for and are ready to learn more. We worked on using shapes to make other shapes along with drawing shapes. We have learned that numbers can be made with lots of different combinations particularly the combinations of 10. We finished up another writing unit. We have become experts at detecting patterns in books and even writing our very own pattern books. The kindergartners are very proud of all the hard work they put into becoming authors. We wrote some great books! First Grade News Second Grade News In first-grade, we have been working hard on adjusting to not only the chilly weather but the challenging content we are learning! We have continued to set ourselves to a high standard with our academics and behavior. Lieutenant Quinn from the Green County Sheriff's Department came to first grade to discuss how leadership and safety contributes to our success as a school and community. He reminded us of how we can continue to make good choices and be our best selves. We have been applying these values to our academic work. In readers workshop we have mastered the art of understanding the characters in our stories by studying how they act and speak through illustrations and the words. It has been so much fun challenging ourselves to predict, sequence and analyze stories! In writers workshop, we have continued to work on improving our sentence structure with capital letters, punctuation and neat handwriting. These skills have helped us express our views in the opinion writing unit where we have reviewed restaurants, books and our favorite things. We will soon begin unit five in math where we will work on place value and comparing number values using greater than, less than and equal to. With a new year right around the corner, we have begun to reflect on how far we have come since the beginning of the school year. We see ourselves becoming independent and confident first graders who are ready to take on 2018! The month of December brought many exciting opportunities for second grade. In writing students made their own how-to books. They picked a topic that they were an expert on and could teach to others. The books included a cover page, table of contents, illustrations, and written descriptions about their topics. Non-fiction has been a focus in reading class. Students learned about different text features that help us understand and book and make it interesting. We were on the hunt in books for the table of contents, bold print words, the index, etc. For math some upcoming skills include; working more with money and story problems. Students also had fun helping decorate our classroom doors to get us in the holiday spirit!
JANUARY 2018 Third Grade News ABRAHAM LINCOLN PAGE 3 Our readers and writers have been working hard, learning all about nonfiction texts! In Reader s Workshop we have been learning about text features such as the Table of Contents, Glossary, and the Index. We are furthering our knowledge of these text features and are creating our own for our informational writings in Writer s Workshop. In Math, students are finishing up unit 3: multiplication, division and learning different ways and thought processes to complete their work. We are looking forward to beginning unit 4 and learning all about measurement and geometry! Fourth Grade News As the New Year begins, fourth graders will be tackling many new concepts and units. In reading, we will be starting our Historical Fiction Unit, and in writing we will be Bringing History to Life with our informational writing pieces. Students will be applying all they learned about reading nonfiction to research and write their own nonfiction text about Native Americans. We hope all fourth graders are spending time each month practicing their multiplication facts, as double digit multiplication is right around the corner in math! Knowing their multiplication facts will help immensely as we start this unit! Fifth Grade News Fourth graders celebrate their first finished writing piece of fourth grade: Realistic Fiction Stories! It is hard to believe it is already December! This month we worked a lot with decimals and fractions. Students learned what a fraction is, how to estimate and round fractions, and began exploring equivalent fractions. In our current unit, we are working with decimals and understanding what they mean and how they re related to fractions. Coordinate Grids and plotting points on a graph are also a few things we have been working on lately. In Reader s we have worked on finding the main idea of non-fiction texts and identifying supporting details. In Writer s we are finishing our persuasive essay unit. Students have written about whether schools should serve chocolate milk or not, and backed their opinion up using facts from research. They then had the opportunity to research a new topic, and write a persuasive essay on that. It has been a busy month here in fifth grade! Enjoy your break!
PAGE 4 Art News Kaylee Alt was selected to be December s, Artist of the Month with her Jasper Johns inspired collage. Kaylee and her kindergartener classmates learned about the Pop Artist, Jasper Johns and how he incorporated everyday objects, like numbers and flags, into his paintings. In this projects Kaylee was asked to first paint the background using the primary colors and mix secondary colors. Then she printed, traced and glued numbers on top. What stands out about Kaylee s collage is how she included all three of these techniques, as well as making careful choices about the colors that she used. Kaylee also exhibits positive studio habits in the classroom by following directions. Kaylee s strength in following directions, but also including her own ideas is shown in this beautiful collage. Congratulations, Kaylee! Music News The second and third grade students were total rock stars at their December 12th concert. 4K, kindergarten and first graders are preparing songs, dances and skits for their concert which will take place on Tuesday, February 13th. Our theme is Really Raffi. Fourth and Fifth grade students are reviewing their rhythms and practicing reading music on the treble clef staff. Physical Education News I hope everyone enjoyed the pictures of drumfit from our Monday Fitness classes. I always like to throw a change at the students to give them the opportunity to try new things. The kids did a fantastic job of participating and stepping outside their comfort zone. We were able to do many different songs that were led online by a variety of instructors. We have been using most of our fitness time to work on the 5 components of fitness with 15-20 minutes workouts and then we use the remainder of our time to play a game so drumfit is a nice change. If your child really enjoyed drumfit all you need is an exercise ball and any sort of baton, stick or cut up broom handle and they could do it at home. All you need to do is look up drumfit on youtube and there a variety of videos and instructors to choose from. It is also an activity you may enjoy trying with your children, I think it is a blast. Have a great break and see you in January.
Counselor s Corner PAGE 5 Greetings everyone! Exciting news to share this month! On Friday December 1st, Abe Lincoln held another Student Council Spirit Day: Gum Day. This day students were given the option of donating $1 to earn the right to chew gum for this day only during school. In total,we raised $186 to donate towards Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Green County! This is the highest we have raised in the 3 years that I've been at Abe, and shows how amazing our school truly is! Special thanks to my Student Council's 5th Grade Treasurer Brinley Roidt (pictured) for assisting me with collecting, organizing, counting, and re-counting the donations! She's a champ! In Guidance class, all grade levels have begun learning lessons on Emotional Management and calming down anger. As always, please continue to follow up with your child at home regarding the lessons they learned in Guidance class. As always, asking questions is beneficial! ( What did you learn in Mr. Heim s guidance class? How do you stop yourself when you re angry/upset?, etc.) It s crucial that all students learn how to control their bodies when they become upset and how to better manage their emotions, and parental support helps supplement the lessons I teach! As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns! I hope everyone has an enjoyable winter break! I m very excited to kick off 2018 and see what adventures this year brings! Aaron Heim School Counselor aaronheim@monroe.k12.wi.us 1-608-328-7844 Mara Dickson District Award Lamp of Learning Student of the Month Mara is truly a one of a kind student. She is kind and caring to all peers; offering support and help whenever needed. I am impressed daily with her kindness and willingness to offer help to anyone who needs it. She excels academically, but that doesn t stop her from seeking out challenges to further her academic success. Mara is also a leader in the classroom. She is respectful in all situations. She is an exceptional listener during lessons, and soaks up new information quickly. Mara is a great example for all students at Abraham Lincoln. -Mrs. Schuetz
PAGE 6 Enjoy OverDrive This Winter Enjoy ebooks, audiobooks and enarrated books this summer from any device. All elementary students and their families from the Monroe School District are welcome to use the elementary OverDrive website. The website for OverDrive is the following: http://monroeschools.lib.overdrive.com or you may download the OverDrive app and find your local school s library. Your son or daughter will use the same username and password that they use in school to log into the OverDrive website. You may also go to our School District s website: http://monroeschoolslibrary.com You will click on the Quick Link Tab, go to Student Resources and locate the OverDrive site for elementary students only. Your child will use their school s computer login. Once you are into the OverDrive website, please choose the school your child attends and login. Please explore the website and if you are unable to locate what you are looking for, please go back to the front page of the website and click on the help tab on the bottom. There are many helpful resources that will assist you in becoming familiar with the OverDrive site. Students may check out up to three books for a two week period. If you need further assistance, please ask Beth Ableman-Bernet at any of the three elementary schools, Lisa Schumacher at Abraham Lincoln LMC, Ann Siegel at Northside LMC and/or Cheryl Keene at Parkside s LMC. Please let us know if you have any book requests for the OverDrive platform. We try to honor all student, parents and teacher requests.
PAGE 7 I recently came across an article, The Five Stages of Reading Development published on www.theliteracybug.com, and thought I would share some of the more interesting information from it. Stage 1: The Emergent Pre-reader (typically between 6 months to 6 years old) In this stage, a child is read to and hears a range of sounds, words, concepts, and talk. By the end of this stage, the child may pretend to read and may even retell a familiar story when looking through the pages. The child can name the letters of the alphabet and can print their own name. Also, the child understands thousands of words spoken to them by age 6 but can only read a few of these. Stage 2: The Novice Reader (typically between 6 to 7 years old) This stage is marked by the child learning the relationship between letters and sounds and between printed and spoken words. By the end of this stage, most children understand up to 4000 or more words but can read only about 600 of them. This stage is where children are learning to decode printed words and to understand the meaning of what they have decoded. Stage 3: The Decoding Reader (typically between 7-9 years old) During this stage, children are reading simple, familiar stories with increasing fluency (reading with speed, accuracy, and proper expression). In order to continue their development, readers need to add at least 3,000 words to what they can decode. Becoming fluent at this stage is being able to use knowledge about a word (its letters, patterns, meanings, roots and endings) quickly enough for the brain to have time to think and comprehend what is read. By the end of this stage, about 3,000 words can be read and understood and about 9,000 are known when heard. At this point, listening is still more effective for complete understanding than reading on their own. Stage 4: The Fluent, Comprehending Reader (typically between 9-15 years old) By this stage, reading is the way to learn new ideas and knowledge, to experience new feelings and attitudes and to think about new perspectives. At the beginning of stage 4, listening is more effective (for comprehension) than reading independently. This stage can also be tricky, as At this time, teachers and parents can be lulled by fluentsounding reading into thinking that a child understands all the words he or she is reading. By the end of this stage for those who read well, reading on their own may be more efficient. Stage 5: The Expert Reader (typically from 16 years and older) This stage is where the learner is reading from a wide variety of complex materials, and reading comprehension is better than listening comprehension of difficult material. At the elementary school level, we do not get to see students enter the Expert Reader stage, but we try to give the foundation for this to happen for every child. It was interesting to read the end of this article which stated that The end of reading development doesn t exist, meaning that there are always new things to be learned and integrated into our minds. It s a lifetime journey! If you have questions about your child s reading development, or would like some specific skills to work on with your child, feel free to contact me (Jeff Moorman, Interventionist), Lisa Skeway, Reading Specialist, or your child s teacher. Our goal is to build life-long readers and learners and know that you want this for your child as well. Mark your calendar for Monday, January 29th. Math & Science Night is 6:00-7:30 pm! We hope to see many families on this night for fun and learning!