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Volume 1, Issue 21

October 31, 2008

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I would like to thank all the parents who attended the parent teacher conferences on October 23rd and 24th. It’s very important to keep the lines of communication open between parents and teachers so we can all work together toward the success of our students. There are several events coming up in November that we would like you to be aware of. Our Speech Team will be competing at the IESA Contest at Prairie Central Junior High in Forrest on November 8th. We have seven students involved, with the first performance at 8:30 a.m. I’m sure they would appreciate your support if possible. Girl’s Basketball will continue throughout November and Boy’s Basketball will begin. You can view the team schedules on the Flanagan Junior High website at www.flanagan.k12.il.us.

All 8th grade students will be taking the EXPLORE test on November 10th. The test is a curriculum-based assessment program developed by ACT to help eighth grade students develop a high school course plan that prepares them to achieve their post-high school goals. Pontiac Township High School uses the EXPLORE test scores to help with appropriate placement of students in high school courses. The students will receive a booklet of information before the test is given. They should be prepared with two No. 2 pencils and a calculator for the test.

Thanksgiving is a little later than usual this year. Staff and students will be looking forward to having a holiday on November 27th and 28th. Christmas will be just around the corner when we return to school after Thanksgiving on Monday, December 1st. Let’s all keep in mind and take time to be thankful for all the things we have been blessed with during 2008. I like the old saying, “contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have.” We have so much. We also have lots of things to be thankful for here at Graymont Grade School. Great kids, supportive families and community members, a fine staff, and a tradition of excellence are things I am very thankful for.

I hope you and your family have a great holiday and are able to take the time to enjoy one another and reflect on the blessings you have experienced this past year. Take care.

Bill James

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Student Council November Activities: • Penny Wars - The money collected will be donated to Hunter Gerdes’s family. Hunter was recently diagnosed with Leukemia and is currently in Memphis Tennessee at the St. Judes Hospital.

• Graymont Warrior T-Shirts/Sweatshirt sales will also be held in November. Look for future communication on that closer to November.

Student Council

Speech TeamSpeech Team competition will be held on Saturday, November 8 th at Prairie Central Jr. High in Forest. The girls have been working very hard on blocking and the memorization of their speech. On the day of competition, please arrive 45 minutes before your child is scheduled to perform. If you ordered a Speech T-Shirt you can pick it up when you arrive at the school. If you have any questions, please give Ms. Wilson a call 743-5346.

Honor/High Honor Roll 1st Quarter

Honor Roll – Shane Burns, Ashley Rudolph, Abby Jacobs, Emma Rich, Dallas Burns, Stevie Carroll, Cynthia Ribota, Lindsay Rich

High Honors – Madison Jeziorski, Kevin Shaughnessy, Justin Rich, Kylee Bier, Abby Legner, Caleb Bray, Abby Follmer, Claralee Schwarz

Snuggle up and ReadWe will have a “Snuggle Up and Read Day” at Graymont School on November 20th. Students will be allowed to wear their pajamas to school on that day. At 11:15 a.m., we will let them get their lunch and lounge on the gym floor and read until afternoon classes begin. This event is held in conjunction with the National Family Reading Night on that date. Students will be encouraged to read with their parents at home that evening if possible.

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Mrs. Erickson - Kindergarten

Extra, Extra, Read All About It!!!

Mrs. Hinz – 1st/2nd

We are beginning one of my favorite times of the year. It is so interesting to learn about how our country began and how lots of our customs and holidays came to be. We will be learning how people took risks because of their beliefs.

Reading Readiness sees our class beginning to read small words and sounding out longer words. We are starting to count the number of letters and then the number of sounds. This awareness often helps us focus as we look at a word.

Math has us using our counting and one-to-one correspondence skills as we learn several Native American games. We will also focus on story problems that use basic addition and subtraction. The students will also be using story mats to create problems.

Our room will be featuring many Native American artifacts and materials that we can use to explore and learn. There will be many projects as we move through the landing at Plymouth and the first very hard year for the Pilgrims. We will find out how very important the Native Americans were to the Pilgrims.

All of our studies will culminate in preparing a classroom feast. We will again test our abilities as chefs. Our first task will be coming up with a menu that everyone can agree upon. The results are always fantastic and YUMMY!!!

To everyone at Graymont School: WE WISH YOU A HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Don’t eat too much turkey!!

First graders have entered their third unit in reading. They are really zipping along. They will be working on

short (e) and short (u) words. We will also work compare and contrast, author’s purpose, sequence, and main

idea. 1st graders will be finishing up work on nouns and beginning verbs in language arts. We have been

working on greater or less, skip counting, and original numbers in math.

Second graders will be ending our second unit and beginning our third unit in reading. We are focusing on the

tricky sounding letter combinations. We are also practicing our fluency and taking reading pauses in the

correct part. We will work on summarizing, theme, context clues, and character. In language arts, we will

begin working with verbs. Second graders are very excited to start adding and subtracting two-digit numbers.

Much of November will be spent learning and mastering this skill with carrying and regrouping.

Both grades will be continuing our social studies unit on communities and citizens. This year is a voting year

so we will also spend some time learning about why and how we vote. We will also discuss characteristics of

governor, mayor, and president, identify U.S.A. symbols, and learn about some historical people: Clara Barton,

Fredrick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt. We will also continue to integrate citizenship lessons into our unit.

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Ms. Rients – 3rd/4th Parents, it was great meeting with you during conferences. Thanks for taking time to come and discuss how your child is doing in school. Parent involvement makes a world of difference in your child’s education.

Reading, Language, WritingIn reading, we will use our stories to practice context clues, find facts and opinions, identify the main idea and details, and visualize what is happening in the story using our senses. In language arts, we are going to use our own writing to learn about the different parts of speech and conventions. We will start with journal writing to practice the concepts learned during our lesson. In writing we are the authors and illustrators of persuasive stories. After reading Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type, where the cows and chickens want electric blankets because the barn is cold, each student picked new animals and are rewriting the story for what their animals want and what they will do if they don’t get it. The animals have to be persuasive to convince their owners to give them what they want. The students have written very interesting and funny stories; they are so creative!

Math3rd graders will be practicing telling time, finding elapsed time, using a calendar and schedule, and sequencing events. Then we will start multiplication. We will draw pictures and connect multiplication to addition to learn the concept of multiplication. Many 3rd graders are already practicing multiplication with their rocket math, so by reinforcing it in math lessons I am sure they will ZOOM to the top!4th graders are working on their graphing skills. They have done line plots, stem-and-leaf plots, and found the mean, median, and mode. Next they will make bar graphs and circle graphs. After graphing, we will review multiplication and division basic facts through 12 and use multiplication and division for story problems.

Science/Social StudiesIn Social Studies we are finishing our unit on the Northeast. The students have done a great job learning the states and capitals. Also, they did their first research project of the year to make a Northeast State Web Report where each student picked one of the northeast states and found 10 facts about it. We are starting science again with a unit on matter. We will study the properties of matter, states of matter, volume, mass, and density.

Our Flat Stanley’s have been returning home to us and you can check out where they have been on the school’s website under our classroom news.

Mrs. Hott – 5th – 8th

5/6 Social Studies – After learning about Egypt, we moved on through ancient India and are ready to begin learning about ancient China.

5-6 Science – We are now studying different types of energy and have completed some excellent projects to show alternative forms of energy.

7-8 Science – Lot’s of new information to learn about things we thought we were familiar with – the rock cycle, sedimentary rock, igneous rock and metamorphic rock. Afterwards, we will move on to tectonic plates, earthquakes and volcanoes.

Math – All grade levels continue to progress at a good pace and have even had some extra minutes to play our favorite game – “I Have … Who has”. Ask your students about this game and the skills it requires to play.

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Ms. Wilson – 5th – 8th

Special Dates to Remember• Nov 3 – Bus routes reversed• Nov 7 – Picture retakes• Nov 8 – Speech Competition • Nov 19 – Progress Reports• Nov 20 – Snuggle up and Read• Nov 26 – Dismiss @ 200• Nov 27 – No School• Nov 28 – No School

5th/6th Reading: We are working very hard on Unit 2 and will be starting Unit 3 very soon. The reading elements will are focusing on include: persuasive devices, drawing conclusions, compare/contrast, cause/effect, summarizing, characterization, plot, and text structure. Each students is also given at least 15 minutes every day of quiet reading time to work towards their quarterly AR goal.

7th/8th Reading: We are continuing to work on Unit 4 titled Learning the Hard Way. We are exploring the ways that painful or embarrassing events can lead to growth. Students have weekly vocabulary words to learn and are faced with thinking critically when answering questions from each story. Please check with your student periodically to see how they are progressing on their quarterly AR goal.

5th-8th – Language Arts: We are just starting Unit 4: Modifiers. In this unit we will be concentrating on adjectives, comparing with adjectives, articles/demonstratives, adverbs, comparing with adverbs, and negatives.

7th/8th Social Studies: We are steadily moving through our book and will be starting Unit 5: Canada Today. Throughout this chapter we will be looking at Canada’s immigrant roots, their economy, and their government. Thus far students are really enjoying our emphasis on certain parts of the world; other than just what’s outside their back door.

Accelerated Reader: Congratulations to Madison Jeziorski, Kylee Bier, Abby Jacobs, Staci Dixon, Claralee Schwarz, Caleb Bray, Justin Rich, Abby Legner, Lindsay Rich, and Abby Follmer for meeting their first 1st quarter AR goal. Excellent Job! Reminder: You can log on to the AR website https://hosted105.renlearn.com/391791/default.htm to check your child’s progress. 2nd quarter ends December 17th.

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Mrs. Sullan - Art

Kindergarten -The Kindergartners have built a paper collage house using the basic shapes of a rectangle and a square cut diagonally so as to get two triangles, instantly recognized as the roof. When asked what was at the end of their rainbow, we painted a beautiful bow, with the correct color progression. They then drew inside a large, medium, and small gold coin what they wished for their rainbow. They also created this fall with dried bean patterns, model magic, beads, and scarecrows!

First & Second Grade - Many beautiful leaf rubbings were made as they reviewed texture. These were used in their pictures, along with other textures on a tree trunk and house. (Several houses ended up in a tornado) The next project began with the class listening well and echoing the chant in the book “ The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything”. This book introduces a scarecrow and we talked about what the scarecrow does and what it is the crows are wanting to eat. Using fabric and straw, the class glued together a scarecrow, complete with a rainbow sky and a garden to protect. They finished up the season by working with beads, model magic, and dried beans.

Third & Fourth Grade - After the class drew some squirrels and colored them with nice texture for fur, the class created some visually striking collages of leaf rubbings while working in pairs. Mrs. Sullan was pleased to observed successful team work. Along with Autumn comes many insects; most notably, the ladybug that wants to fly into our houses. The class folded many origami ladybugs (the Japanese art of paper folding). They also made a fishing game using an origami fish pattern, a straw pole and a paperclip on a string. Also to celebrate Autumn and the birds migration, the students drew birds and added birdseed in the picture to feed them for the long flight south.

Fifth & Sixth Grade - Painting, color, and printmaking were explored by creating a background of cool colors, and then printing on top using only warm colors. The prints were made from green peppers, celery and some sponge stamps. Printmaking continued into an outer space mural , along with using construction paper crayons which glow on the black construction paper. Very awesome!

Seventh & Eighth Grade - The students helped decorate for fall with some mosaic corn. They are very colorful! This group graded very well on the Elements quiz which I concentrate on in 7th and 8th grade. A major project was started with the molding of paper mache bowls and painting them with a personally meaningful subject matter. Finally, color theory was reviewed and different paints were used for a mixed media painting, choosing one color combination: analogous, monochromatic or complimentary.

Hope your Thanksgiving is meaningful for you and yours! - Mrs. Sullan