Expo Next Week

Second grade students perform at the Thanksgiving assembly.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Parking & Pick Up
In her email message last week Principal Fenech asked everyone to review and follow the A2STEAM parking procedures.  I'm not sure I've ever sent out this revised document.  The school parking lots can not be used for picking up and dropping off students.

STEAM Expo Save the Date
As I wrote last week, our Fall Expo is Thursday, December 7th from 5-7pm.  These are the grade level presentation times:
5:00 - 5:30 Grades K, 3, & 6
5:45 - 6:15 Grades 1, 4, & 7
6:30 - 7:00 Grades 2, 5, & 8 

Room K-3 has a tight presentation schedule so work on arriving on time.  Parking is tough so you will need to arrive early and/or park on the street.  I will move my car to the street to open up one more spot in the school parking lot, but plan on parking being difficult.

Snacks
I am repeating this from last week too because I know Thanksgiving made it busy: Make sure the snacks you send it for your child to eat in the classroom, in the afternoon do not have nuts or peanut butter.

Mr. Luxon Out on Thrusday
This Thursday I will be out of the classroom.  Visiting teacher Ms. Goffas, who knows both A2STEAM and my classroom well, will be teaching in my absence.

Curriculum Overview

STEAM Project - We are preparing a presentation of our work for Expo.

Reading - This week we will begin comparing and contrasting different versions of the well known Gingerbread Man story.

Writing - Students are working on making sure their writing includes ending punctuation.  Students are reviewing the writing they did that will be presented at Expo.

Math - This week we will develop a foundation for fractions by looking at the different shapes that be made when you break up a hexagon.  For instance, a hexagon can be divided into 6 equilateral triangles.  Students will also work on organizing objects from shortest to longest.

Word Study - We are learning to recognize common word groupings.  This week we will look at the -og (dog, frog, fog) and -ug (bug, rug, slug, luggage) word groupings.

Happy Thanksgiving

Students wrote about the roles of the different people at our school.

Bookfair
The bookfair was really successful for the school, thank you!   See specifics about the money we raised in a message from Ms. Reader at the bottom of this post.

Important Information About Report Cards
Report cards go home tomorrow, Tuesday, November 21st.  They will be in a 9 x 12 yellow envelope.  The envelope needs to be signed and returned to school on Monday, November 27th.  You keep the report card.  Please do not throw out the envelope, send it back to me.

STEAM Expo Save the Date
Our Fall Expo is Thursday, December 7th from 5-7pm.  These are the grade level presentation times:
5:00 - 5:30 Grades K, 3, & 6
5:45 - 6:15 Grades 1, 4, & 7
6:30 - 7:00 Grades 2, 5, & 8 

Room K-3 has a tight presentation schedule so work on arriving on time.  Parking is tough so you will need to arrive early and/or park on the street. 

Snacks
Make sure the snacks you send in for your child to eat in the afternoon, in the classroom, do not have nuts or peanut butter.

Curriculum Overview

STEAM Project - Students completed great writing last week about the roles of the different adults at STEAM.

Reading - We will read some books about Thanksgiving and gratitude.

Writing - Students are working on writing simple letters to people in their family.

Math - Ask your students about the surveys they conducted with their classmates last week.  This week we will practice our numbers up to 30 and try to iron out the reversals that happen when we write our numbers.

Word Study - We are learning to recognize common word groupings.  So far we have looked at words contain -at (cat, flat) -it ('sit','kitten') and -ed (red, teddy bear)  This week we will look at the -og word grouping including words like 'frog', and 'jog'.

Message from Ms. Reader:

Book Fair This Week

Last week I wasn't able to post pictures from the October 31st Family Read Together.  Here's one!  More are in the gallery.

5th Grade Chicken Coop
I'm sure you have heard about the chicken coop fire that happened over the weekend.  If you haven't, this email of explanation, was sent to families.  I plan to speak with the Room K-3 students on Monday morning, discuss their concerns, and help them write a class letter of condolence to the 5th grade students.

Some of you have asked about how you can help the 5th grade class, I'm sure more information about that will come out.  One thing you can do now is sign up for Amazon Smile and set up your Amazon account to automatically donate to the Northside Elementary School Parent-Teacher Organization.  There is no additional cost to you for doing this.  If you go to smile.amazon.com every time you shop at Amazon, a small portion of what you spend will be donated to the school.  I set it up this fall and have already raised $3 for the school in just a couple of months.  This may not seem like much, but if every STEAM family used Amazon Smile it will start to add up to significant amounts.  It does not cost anything extra to use Amazon Smile and you get the same prices that you would otherwise.  Once you set it up, you need to go to smile.amazon.com every time you shop for it to be counted.  I really don't like writing the paragraph above, I think public education should be free, and we shouldn't have to do all this, but getting more money to our PTO really does benefit our students directly.

Holiday Food Drive
This flyer has information on the our student council's holiday food drive.  You can bring in non-perishable food from 11/13 to 11/17.

Boots!
As the weather changes it is helpful to send students to school with snow boots or rain boots.  When you do, also send a pair of regular shoes with them in their backpack.  This is especially important on Thursday and Friday when we have gym class.  If you would like to leave an extra pair of shoes at school permanently that is fine too.

Book Fair
As Ms. Reader wrote last week, A2STEAM is having a book fair, it begins tomorrow November 14th.  Room K-3 students will visit the media center and create a wish list of books tomorrow.  I will make sure they understand that this a list of books they are hoping for, and not a list of books that they will receive.  Purchase days are Thursday and Friday.  On Friday, November 17th, Room K-3 students can bring in money and purchase books. If you would rather purchase books on your own you can do so on Wednesday afternoon.  On Wednesday, November 15th, the media center will stay open after school until 6 PM.  All purchases help raise money for the school.

Online Book Fair Open Now
The physical book fair that starts tomorrow has an online component that is open now!  If you order books online it helps our school just as much as buying books in person.  Here is the link to the online book fair.

Order A2STEAM Clothing For Your Kids and You!
You can order A2STEAM clothing at great prices by going here.  All orders need to be placed before Tuesday, November 28th at 11:59 PM.

Thanksgiving Break
There will be no school Wednesday-November 22nd, Thursday-November 23rd, and Friday-November 24th.


Curriculum Overview

STEAM Project - Students completed amazing writing about either their school community or their neighborhood community last week.  We also recorded videos of exemplary school behavior that we will share at Expo and with the rest of the school.   Mark your calendars for the evening of December 7th, when we will have our fall STEAM Expo, we will start at 5:00 PM.

Reading - We have been reading books that show characters treating each other fairly and with empathy.  Ask your students about Rat and Tiger.

Writing - Students are working on editing and recopying a piece of writing to make it better.  We call this 'publishing'.

Math - The students will learn about surveys, survey their classmates and make a graph showing the favorite colors of their peers.

Word Study - We are learning to recognize common word groupings.  Last week we saw the -it grouping in words like 'sit', 'fit', 'kitten', and 'little'.  This week we will look at the -ed word grouping including words like 'bed', 'red', and 'looked'.

Book Fair November 14th-17th

Ms. Reader and A2STEAM are hosting a book fair to raise money for the school from November 14th-17th.

Annual Book Fair Message from Ms. Reader
The Scholastic Book Fair is fast approaching and will be on our doorstep November 14-17!

This is an all-school event that raises money for the library while simultaneously encouraging children to read. There is also an online component that starts November 1st. To read more about all aspects of the Fair, please click here.

We cannot hold the event without your help! Please consider volunteering by following this link.

We appreciate any time you can give to support this huge endeavor!

A Message From PBL Coordinator Mr. Hatt
Hello community members!  We want to know more about you! That's why a group of parents and educators are starting a community initiative here at A2 STEAM. We are interested in connecting our community to the good work we do here in some meaningful ways. ​Learn more ​from ​our ​website by clicking here.

Our ​first ​step ​is ​to take ​inventory ​of ​our ​community. ​We ​need ​to ​know ​what makes ​us ​special! ​If ​you ​are ​a ​community ​member interested ​in ​connecting ​to ​A2 ​STEAM, ​fill out this form.  There is no commitment necessary when you fill out this form, but we want to hear from you and learn about you! Please take 10 or 15 minutes to fill it out. Thanks!

No School Tomorrow
Tomorrow all Ann Arbor schools will be closed so they can be used as voting locations.  There will be no school tomorrow.

Curriculum Overview

STEAM Project - Students began writing about either their school community or their neighborhood community last week.  We also recorded videos of exemplary school behavior that we will share at Expo and with the rest of the school.  This week we will begin working on our Expo presentation.  Mark your calendars for the evening of December 7th, when we have our fall STEAM Expo.

Reading - We have been reading books that show characters treating each other fairly and with empathy.

Writing - As I wrote above, last week students began writing about either their school community or their neighborhood community.  Part of our work is using the words 'community' or 'role' in our writing.

Math - We will solve and act out simple addition and subtraction word problems.

Word Study - This week we will practice reading and writing simple 3 letter words.  Last week we started with the -at family (cat, hat, rat, mat, bat).  This week we will move to the -it family.