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'.