October 15th through 19th

Keenoy Kardinal News                                                                October 19, 2018

Dear Families,

We have had out of town activities for the last several weekends, so I am very much looking forward to a relaxing weekend at home. I plan on holding on to the Green Work Study Habits this weekend so that I can start working on progress reports at home.  If I have any major concerns this week, I will make sure to communicate that with you today.  Thank you for all your continued support and I really look forward to visiting with you at conferences. 

Vocabulary Hat Day

Thank you for your assistance with the vocabulary hats. We had a great time parading around Paxton showing off our hats to students and adults. The creativity is amazing! Hopefully, all of the 5th graders learned a plethora of new words 

Kardinal of the Week:  Darrihia C.

Hello, my name is Darrihia and I’m ten years old.  I live with my mom, step dad, sister, and two brothers.  I also have two dogs, one cat, and two kittens.  In my free time I like to play outside with friends and play on the Ipad.  I also stay at my dad’s house where my dad, step mom, five brothers, and one sister live.  My grandma also lives next door to my dad.

The next Kardinal of the Week is Tony W.  Please bring any pictures or items that you would like to put on our bulletin board that is located outside of our classroom.

Parent Teacher Conferences

I will be sending home Parent Teacher Conference confirmation times next Friday.  Thank you for returning your request forms so quickly this week.

Schedule for the Winter Open House-December 14th. 

       Perform in Gym    Open House    Lunch/Recess

K         11:15 am          11:35-11:55     10:05-10:55

5th       11:35 am                     

Choir   11:55 am          12:15-12:35     12:45-1:35

4th       12:15 pm         12:35-12:55     10:55-11:45

1          1:30 pm           1:50-2:10         10:30-11:20

3          1:50 pm           2:10-2:30         12:20-1:10

2          2:10 pm           2:30-2:50         11:55-12:45

                                   

Fall Party

Our Fall Party is Friday, October 26. The party will begin at 2:15 and parents may begin setting up for the party around 2:00.  Thank you to Kimberly Kenney for being our room parent coordinator and for organizing this party. Also, Thank You to everyone who signed up to volunteer for the party.  Without volunteers, these parties would not occur.  For our new families to Paxton, students do not dress up in costumes on this day. 

Math

Students took an assessment on Unit 2 this Thursday.  These will be graded and returned to students next Tuesday.  I will share these assessments with you at conferences next week.

We are started Unit 3 on Wednesday. This unit focuses on fractions (fraction concepts, addition, and subtraction of fractions).

Writing

Revising and editing student personal narratives continued this week. When students meet with me one-on-one, I mentioned strengths and areas to work on.  Each student should leave a writing conference with a clear goal for improving their next draft. 

*Students continue to redraft (start typing) their personal narrative stories for improvement.

*Students will complete a post-assessment for this genre of writing.

*Writing pre-assessments and their process piece will be shared during conferences.

*Our next genre of writing will be informational.

Reading

I’m confident that students will really enjoy our next read aloud, Zach’s Lie by Roland Smith.  This book forces the reader to make several inferences and use the context to solve tough words. I will model these comprehension strategies daily during our reading.  Students should also be practicing these skills during independent reading time.  An area that we will continue working on is supporting these ideas (especially inferences) with details directly from the text.  This is an area that stood out as a weakness on the 4^th grade Communication Arts MAP test last year. 

Science and Social Studies

Students took a science assessment on Wednesday over the Water and Earth Systems Unit.  This assessment forced students to apply information learned versus literal comprehension.  This higher-level thinking can pose challenges but is much more beneficial when assessing true understanding of concepts.  We started our Moon Phase/Space Systems Unit on Thursday.

In social studies, we continued learning about the first European Explorers in Chapter 3.  During these lessons, I will especially focus on explorers learning from one another’s mistakes.  These realizations allowed for advancements in exploration during the years 1200-1700.

Word Study

We are entering our fifth word study cycle.  Students are expected to take their spelling words home to study during the week.  The test dates vary from week to week.  My word study plan is based on a 5 day lesson cycle, but there are days that we are not able to fit it into our schedule. 

Reminders

 Oct. 19 Vocabulary Hat Day

Oct. 18  Picture Retake Day

Oct. 22  Dental Screening/Varnish Day

Oct. 25  Steele/Keenoy to Rock Bridge Planetarium  (morning)

Oct. 26  Fall Party 2:15-3:00

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sincerely,

                                                                                                Dan Keenoy