News for the Week of December 14, 2015

Life Skill:  Patience

Quote:  Slow and steady wins the race.
                                     --Aesop

Captain's Table of "STAR" Students

(STAR = Stop, Think, Act Responsibly)

                                                   Student                     Life Skill                           

1st Grade Math                           Sloane                         Effort
                             

2nd Grade LA                              Emma                        Caring
2nd Grade Math                           Kali                            Effort

3rd Grade LA                                Ella                          Courage
3rd Grade Math                             DJ                        Enthusiasm

4th Grade LA                                Luke                         Effort
4th Grade Math                          Brayden                      Effort

This Week In HA...

1st Grade LA

This week in first grade, the students wrote a summary sentence to describe the beginning, middle and end of the story, E-mergency, by Tom Lichtenfeld and Ezra Fields-Meyer.  Afterwards, they created a lipogram for each of the summary sentences.  When creating lipograms this week, the students chose to eliminate the letter "o" for the beginning summary sentence, the letter "a" for the middle summary sentence and the letter "i" for the ending summary sentence.  In doing so, we found that it was easier to create some lipograms than others.  Ask your child which letter it was easier to create a lipogram for.  Another type of writing we learned about this week was a panagram.  Panagrams are sentences that include every letter of the alphabet.  The most famous pangram is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog".  I have placed other examples of these to the right above.  Ask your child if he/she was able to create a pangram and tell you the sentence he/she created.  

With the holidays coming, we also took some time to write a holiday themed story and complete some fun word puzzles.  The stories that the students created were very funny as they explained who would fly Santa's sleigh instead of his reindeer, who were sick.  Ask your child to read you the story he/she compiled.

2nd Grade LA

Second grade students began completing a reading analyzer on chapter 4 of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.  This tool is helping us gain greater understanding about this important chapter in the book.  In chapter 4, Pellegrina, Abilene's grandmother, told Abilene the bedtime story about the princess, who was very selfish, spoiled, and unloving and as a result was turned into a warthog by a witch because she had not learned to love others.  After being turned into a warthog, the princess was killed by the king's men, who had mistaken her for game in the forest.  Due to this turn of events, Abilene was extremely upset, as she wanted a happily ever after ending.  When Abilene requested the story to end happily, her grandmother, Pellegrina, posed the question, "How can a story end happily if there is no love?"  Ask your child to explain key words used in this chapter and describe feelings he/she became aware of as we discussed chapter 4 using our analyzer.  

Since we are approaching the holiday break, we took some time to write a holiday themed story and complete some fun word puzzles.  Second grade students also created some very funny stories about who would guide Santa's sleigh instead of his reindeer, who were sick.  Ask your child to read you the story he/she compiled.

3rd Grade LA

This week, third grade students went on a field trip to the Dunes Learning Center, therefore, we had a very limited amount of time to complete activities.  In the time that we had, the students listened to a story titled, The Legend of the Poinsettia, written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola.  After hearing the story, we discussed key story elements to assist the students in determining if the story was a myth, legend or tall tale.  Ask your child to explain the story and identify the type of story it was.  Afterwards, we played 4 Corners to work on identifying the parts of speech.  The students all had a wonderful time playing this game.  

4th Grade LA

In fourth grade this week, the students finished documenting their sources on the sources cited page and continued compiling the 10+ important events for their timelines.  Those students that had finished compiling their events moved on to begin constructing their timeline by typing up the events in the template provided in Google Docs.  Ask your child to show you how he/she is progressing using the Google Docs file we have created.  Please let me know if you are having difficulty accessing your child's account and I will be happy to assist you.  


Fourth grade also took some time to have some fun before the holiday break.  The fourth grade students were provided time to doodle and create some interesting pictures.  A great deal of fun was had by all as we shared our pictures.  

Building Vocabulary

The "Words of the Day" for this week are baffle and redundance.  Ask your child to define these words and use them in a sentence.  If he/she is unable to define these words, ask him/her to look them up in the dictionary.

1st Grade Math

First grade students continued working on coin identification and calculating amounts of coins needed to purchase items with different prices.  Then, we took some time to play Holiday Addition Bump.  This game was a lot of fun and required us to use our addition skills.  

2nd Grade Math

This week, second grade students learned that the Fibonacci Sequence is also called the Golden Ratio or Spiral.  If you take squares with the widths specified by the Fibonacci numbers, a spiral will form and go on forever, which is a situation termed by mathematicians as infinity.  Therefore, we learned that math shapes not only our world but the whole universe.  Ask your child to think of mathematical spirals or shapes he/she finds in nature.  Due to the 2nd grade festivities planned on Thursday, we were not able to have time to work the fun holiday themed math sheets and activities.  Therefore, we will complete them after the holiday break.  

3rd Grade Math

In third grade this week, the students completed another round of timed multiplication tests.  All of the students have passed the X 2's and X 3's at this point but there are several students, who have passed higher level multiplication tests.  Therefore, ask your child what level he/she is currently attempting to pass and practice these multiplication facts over the holiday break.  Afterwards, we played many fun multiplication games to continue to practice our multiplication facts.  One of the games you can play at home with your child is Multiplication War.  Ask your child to show you how to play this game.

4th Grade Math

Fourth grade students continued working on fractions but also took some time to work on fun holiday themed word problems and a logic puzzle titled, Ugly Christmas Sweaters.  Ask your child to explain the Ugly Christmas Sweater logic problem and how we solved it.  Also have your child try the following word problems involving fractions:

• If Mom made 30 gingerbread men and Owen ate 6 of them, what fraction of the cookies did Owen eat?  Reduce your answer to its lowest form.  
• If 8 people ate 32 slices of ham, what fraction of the ham did each person eat?  Reduce your answer to its lowest form.  

It has been a wonderful week in HA as we completed many activities along with playing some fun games prior to the holiday break.  I hope that everyone has time to enjoy the fun and festivities of this holiday season with family and friends during our winter break.  Happy Holidays to all!

Melissa Valtierra
High Ability Aide
Bailly Elementary School