/ 1
“We Give Back Wednesdays”
Dress Down Bring a Non-Perishable Thanksgiving Donation / 2 / 3
6 / 7
No School for Students
Professional Day for Staff / 8
“We Give Back Wednesdays”
Dress Down Bring a Non-Perishable Thanksgiving Donation / 9
SQUARE 1 ART CATALOGS GO HOME
PTO Meeting 3:50-4:30 / 10
No School
Veterans’ Day
13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17
Cookie Dough/ Pie Delivery 11-5
All items will be delivered frozen- mark your calendars
20
SQUARE 1 ART ORDERS ARE DUE / 21 / 22
Early Release Day 11:30 Dismissal
FREE DRESS DOWN / 23
Thanksgiving
No School / 24
Thanksgiving Recess
No School
27 / 28 / 29 / 30 / 1
Preschool
Happy November!
This month in preschool we are starting the store unit. We will be talking about the different kinds of stores and what they sell. We will learn about the different jobs in stores, and the process of buying and sellingmerchandise. We will create and interact with a store environment through dramatic play, and listen and share stories about personal experiences.
Kindergarten
The learning in kindergarten has been plentiful!!! The students have been very busy learning phonics and phonemic awareness skills for reading and writing. Every day, we do morning message and gather as a group to do morning greetings. This is developing a sense of community in the classrooms. In ELA, we will add to our high frequency word knowledge by learning four new words. We will do close reading lessons to dig a little deeper into the text. New vocabulary is taught and encouraged to be used in speaking and writing. In math, we will be working on numbers 9 and 10 in different configurations. We will also begin talking about one more +1 and one less -1. In STEM, we will begin our investigation of physical science (force and motion). Make sure you ask your child what he/she learned in school! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families!!!
STEM
We are pleased to welcome a technology/ computer lab teacher to the Silvia School family. Mrs. Carrie Gibbons has taught in Fall River for the past seventeen years in many different roles. She has taught Reading Recovery, small group reading interventions, grade 1, grade 2, grade 3, and grade 4. Mrs. Gibbons is very excited about this wonderful opportunity to be Silvia's new technology teacher! Parents, please have your children work on reading and math at home. Just go to our school's computer lab page: http://www.fallriverschools.org/SilviaComputerLab.cfm and, from there, children can work on Dreambox (math) and for K-2, children can work on Headsprout (reading), or many other teacher approved learning sites!
Grade 1
First grade students have been working hard. They have already finished Unit 1 in our reading curriculum. Unit 1 focused on short vowels, beginning and ending consonant blends, consonant digraph “ch”, and endings “ing” and “s”. Our math focus is on the structure of numbers to 10 and solving word problems. First grade has also begun using a variety of selected texts as a “Close Read”. Comprehension tasks are given each week that provide opportunities for our students to be exposed to great literature as well as rigorous vocabulary. Thank you for your support in having your child complete their homework each week. We look forward to another great month of learning. First grade rocks!
Grade 2
This month second grade will continue work on place value. We are starting to learn and utilize the open number line in order to get from one number to another. On the open number line, students are expected to jump 1’s, 10’s, and 100’s to land on friendly numbers. To help students at home, please continue to practice addition and subtraction fact fluency up to 20. In ELA, we will be continuing with Unit 2, which is about working together. We will be continuing to practice close reading skills and responding to a text-dependent question. In Science, we will be continuing our work with habitats around the world. Please continue to read nightly with your child! Happy Thanksgiving!
Grade 3
Happy Fall! Many exciting things are happening in Grade 3! During math, we will begin working on a unit called The Big Dinner. In The Big Dinner, the preparation of a turkey dinner introduces early multiplication strategies and supports automatizing the facts using the ratio table, and developing the distributive property with large numbers. In addition, students will participate in cultural activities and have a big dinner celebration as a culminating activity. In writing, our focus will be on narrative writing. The students will write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective techniques, descriptive details, and clear events in sequence. Our next classroom novel is The One and Only Ivan. It is a children's novel written by Katherine Applegate. It is a Newbery Medal winner. The book is about a silverback gorilla named Ivan who lives in captivity, in a cage at a mall. We will focus on narrative elements, figurative language, and vocabulary. In science, we will be working on our weather unit, designing flood barriers. This unit explores different absorbent and non absorbent materials to create a flood barrier. Students use their knowledge of the materials to Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create and Improve a barrier around Yogi’s doghouse to protect him from getting wet during a rainstorm.
Grade 4
In Reading, we will be finishing up our novel, Because of Winn Dixie. Our unit will end with students completing a performance task on a character study. Students will be analyzing one main character in the novel and using STEAL (speech, thoughts, effect on others, actions and looks) to identify their character’s traits. Our narrative unit on writing is a continuation of a story. Students will be assessed on the learning of the unit with an end of unit writing test.
In Math, we just completed our geometry unit where we learned about various angle measures, parallel and perpendicular lines, as well as line segments. Our next unit involves multiplication and division of multi-digit numbers. Students will use their understanding of place value to multiply and divide as well as using visual representations to deepen their understanding.
In Science, students are learning the natural processes that shape our earth. For example, weathering, erosion, and deposition through wind, water, and ice. In addition, students will analyze maps of Earth’s various landforms for patterns and identifying features.
Grade 5
In Reading, students will continue reading our novel, Hatchet. We have been tracking the main character, Brian’s, character traits and responding to various different text-dependent prompts. Students just finished writing two text-based essays. In one essay, students compared and contrasted the two settings of our novel, or as we like to call them, Brian’s “two worlds”. In the other essay, students inferred Karana’s character traits and how they help her survive in the wilderness. The results from these essays will be used to set individual student goals. As always, our focus is citing evidence from the text to support our answers. In writing, students were recently assessed on their point of view narrative writing skills. We will continue to practice ways to develop real or imagined experiences using effective techniques, descriptive details, and clear events in sequence. Towards the end of the month, students will write an opinion piece that states and supports their opinion on year-round schooling.
Don’t forget our weekly reading homework/log!
In Math, students have been working hard and have completed their place value unit and are working on the standard algorithm for multiplication. Please make sure that students are practicing their basic multiplication facts at home. Students are also learning how to add and subtract decimals and soon will be multiplying decimals. Those basic multiplication facts are so important!
In Science, students are wrapping up the matter unit and have done several types of labs. Students have separated mixtures. Students have experienced a chemical change and understand the law of conservation. Students can identify the signs of a chemical change and our excited to experience more chemical changes this week. Next week we will be having our test on matter. Our next unit in science is the solar system, we will be learning about the earth, sun, moon, day and night, and the seasons to name a couple concepts.
GATE
4D: Our study of multiplication & division continues! Students are learning various strategies to help them efficiently solve multiplication & division problems. In November, we will begin to focus on using the strategies we have learned to solve multi-step word problems. Students will be using their math skills to determine the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner! We will be reading many nonfiction articles to help build background knowledge for our next novel, The Sign of the Beaver. In Science, we will be learning about weathering & erosion and how it impacts the surface of the Earth!
5P: We will begin writing a realistic fictional story that contains mystery and suspense. Students will also be prepping for MCAS by rewriting a piece of literature from and different point of view. After we finish Doll Bones, we will practice for MCAS by writing a continuation story from where the book leaves off. In math, we are in the middle of designing, stocking, creating our very own candy stores. We are learning about cost, revenue, and profits. Kids used coordinate grids to map out their displays. They will need to calculate their staff's salary and make a plan for making their business successful. TONS of work with decimals, fractions, and conversions.
MUSIC
Save the date- our Holiday Concert will be held on Tuesday, December 12th
December will be here before we know it so, this month, we will be preparing for our annual Winter Concert. The concert will be taking place Tuesday, December 12th.
Each class grade will prepare two songs to sing and perform for family and friends. This is a time of preparation and lots and lots of practice for our students. For us to do our best we must be ready for class in a different kind of way. We are preparing as a school celebrating through song, and our voices, with the gift of music to our families and friends. We will be working diligently in the classroom on many different levels to achieve the same goals using our voices to our best potential on performance night. We will be singing alone and with others to the best of our ability. We will be working on memorizing our lyrics by heart,and also working on our stage performance and etiquette. Later this month, I will be sending home the lyrics so that your child is practicing at home, if they wish to do so. I am looking forward to this being a very productive and exciting month of preparation for the concert. I would like to wish you and your families a very Happy Thanksgiving! As always if there are any questions, concerns or other please contact me via email ee you in December!
ART
During the month of November our main focus continues to be thinking and working through problems like artists. We have been talking about how artists get ideas and set up their studio spaces to make the best work! Kindergarten students have been learning about artist Wassily Kandinsky with a focus on lines and shapes. First grade artists are learning how to group different colors. We have discussed primary, secondary, and now warm and cool. We are creating tissue paper tree collages! Second grade artists have been learning about 2-D and 3-D art with a focus on pumpkins and now trees. We are talking about how to manipulate various materials. Third grade artists are inspired by artist Gustav Klimt and painting swirly gold “Trees of Life”! Fourth grade artists are building their own unique city maps inspired by “Broadway Boogie Woogie” by Piet Mondrian. Fifth Grade artists have started station rotation in the art room focused on the Elements of Art. We will continue learning how artists use 7 Elements of Art in their artwork. Remember… Art Kids are Smart Kids!
P.E.
Students in Grades K through 2nd have moved on to our “Eye-Foot Coordination Unit.” Within this unit students are being introduced to basic kicking and dribbling skills in preparation for playing small soccer games when they get into the upper grades. Our older students, Grades 3rd through 5th are playing soccer in small groups with the initial focus being on maintaining possession of the ball by dribbling and passing. In the next few weeks we will begin shooting on a target and introducing tactics to enjoy a modified game of soccer.
We are thrilled with the amount of students who have donated to our 2nd annual “extra candy for extra recess” endeavor. We have currently collected over 130 lbs of extra sugar that will not enter our Silvia Star bodies! If feels great to share our sweet treats with others on our mission to keeping healthy minds AND bodies.