South End School
September Class News
PreK - Mrs. Donker
Students are working on identifying letters in their first name and numbers 1-3. Our PreK students are learning about weather and making and sharing with friends.
PreK - Mrs. Engel
Our preschoolers are working on letter identification of a,b,c and d in Fundations. We are also working on tracing our names. We are working on counting 1-5 and simple patterns with our number line calendar using yellow and orange pumpkins.Students are working on identifying emotions and problem solving. We are currently in our farm unit and learning about the different types of animals that live on a farm and the sounds they make.
Kindergarten
ELA - Students are working letter identification of t, b, f, n, m through literacy reading, songs, games and centers.
Math - Students are working on identifying and writing numbers 0-5.
Sc/SS - Kindergartners enjoying learning life events through Scholastic News and have shown a great liking to Mystery Science
Special Events/Other - We look forward to Pumpkin Day and Color week!
Grade 1
ELA - The year is off to a great start! Students are engaging daily in Heggerty and getting the hang of all the hand motions helping us to hear and identify sounds in words. In Fundations have been focusing on short vowel sounds and tapping out our words. We were also introduced to our first batch of trick words. In Reading, we are focusing on character, setting and predictions. The students love listening to and pulling apart books.
Math - Envisions is under way and the students are doing fantastic with identifying numbers, beginning addition and subtraction.
Sc/SS - First grade is loving Mystery Science and getting to explore and learn. There is a lot of focus on the changing of the seasons. This carries over into our Social Studies where we have been incorporating Scholastic News. We have also spent time on creating a classroom community where everyone feels comfortable!
Special Events/Other - October is an exciting month! Week of respect is a fun time to dress up every day - but also an important lesson for all of us. Keep an eye out for the spirit calendar - it is always fun to see everyone being involved. We are looking forward to seeing all our spooky students dressed up for Halloween.
Grade 2
ELA - In Heggerty, we are producing rhyming words as well as focusing on adding, deleting, and substituting beginning and ending sounds in words. In Fundations, second grades are reviewing digraphs and the many glued sounds. In reading, students have begun to make connections to the characters in our stories as well as discussing how the characters’ feelings change throughout a story. In writing, we are beginning to work on our personal narratives, first focusing on a special place.
Math - Second graders are wrapping up Topic 1 in the new math series, Envisions. Topic 1 focuses on adding and subtracting numbers up to 20. Students enjoyed using a variety of strategies and manipulatives to practice.
Sc/SS - In social studies, second grade learned about the different types of communities. Students wrapped up the unit with a poster project. Each student was given a different community and created a visual representation of that community. They will present the posters to their classmates and hang up our walls afterwards.
Special Events/Other - Second graders are looking forward to starting our first science unit on states of matter. They are always looking forward to any science experiments! Second grade is also looking forward to Picture Day, the Book Fair, and the Halloween parade.
Grade 3
ELA - Grade 3 has read various types of fiction books including realistic fiction, narrative fiction, folktales, and fairytales! Throughout these stories, we’ve discussed skills such as summarizing, I’m character changes, and we’re beginning to think about the theme of a story. We've also launched our fictional narrative writing unit and are excited to plan out our very own stories!
Math - Our focus in math so far has been on using strategies to practice and model multiplication and division! We’ve created arrays, equal groups, bar models, skip-counted, and used repeated addition and subtraction to help work on problem solving with word problems. We encourage our students to start practicing memorizing their multiplication facts!
Sc/SS - Our first Science unit of the school year is Weather! We’ve learned about different types of clouds, how the temperature changes in different locations around the world, and different types of severe weather. We’re excited to continue this unit through October!
Special Events/Other - In the month of September, we celebrated the Third Day of Third Grade by completing many “3’s” activities. We also have started celebrating birthdays in our classrooms! We are excited for some upcoming events in October such as the Week of Respect, our book fair, and exciting Halloween festivities!
Grade 4
ELA - We have been working on building our reading stamina by working in our Daily Rounds! The students have been learning all about character traits and context clues to help them strengthen their reading skills. When responding to text, they are building on from last year by using RAPPS while supporting their response with a second piece of evidence. We will be diving into our first novel of the year soon, Fish In a Tree. In Writing the students have been working hard to build their writing stamina, by writing in their Writer’s notebooks and through drafting, editing, and publishing our “If I Were in Charge of the World,” poems. We are about to embark on our Informative Writing Unit. Students will be using several texts as models to understand how informative writing can help them to be able to become “experts” in sharing knowledge as they work to write their Informational Animal Reports.
Math - The students demonstrated their ability to use place value to read and write numbers, round numbers, and rename numbers. The students have also applied these skills to help them add and subtract multi-digit numbers using estimation to check their work! We have taken our first two chapter assessments online using the Envisions platform. We look forward to beginning our next chapter on multiplication!
Sc/SS - We have been preparing and studying hard to learn all about and memorize the states and capitals of the Northeast! We are excited to begin studying about animal adaptations that will help us gather information to write our Informational Animal reports!
Special Events/Other - Fourth grade is off to a great start of their last year at South End! We enjoyed bonding and learning more about all we have in common when we celebrated the Fourth Day of Fourth Grade with grade level activities! Many of our 4th graders have volunteered to serve as safeties for our kindergartners. We are so proud of them!
Special Areas
PE - All Physical Education classes grades 1-4 are participating in the President’s Challenge. The challenges are designed to help improve their activity and fitness levels. The five challenges consist of push-ups, v-sit, shuttle run, curl-ups, and the PACER. The kindergarten students have been working on locomotor skills which consist of walking, running, hopping, jumping, galloping, sliding, skipping, and leaping. These skills enable children to move through different environments, moving their body from one place to another.
Art - The artists of South End have been busy at work! Preschool has been in the autumn zone! They have been busy creating mixed media pieces of apples, pumpkins, and leaves. The kindergarten artists have been practicing their shapes and coloring while completing their own “South End School” drawings, and have been recently working on the cutest little owl collages. Our first graders honored Patriots’ Day by drawing precious little patriotic birds. They are currently exploring the element of color (warm and cool) and are creating a leaf mixed-media piece. Our second grade has been studying the art movement known as Pop Art and has been specifically focusing on Andy Warhol. They created a Pop Art styled Statue of Liberty, and have been currently working on a color study in Warhol’s gridlike repetitive style. Stay tuned! Third and fourth grade artists spent time creating an “All About Me” piece including adjectives and nouns that represent themselves. They used watercolor paint, metallic pens, and collage to create some really funky masterpieces! As the third and fourth grade finishes these, they will be studying how to draw a still life, using real life pumpkins and faux candles to set the autumn mood. We are so excited for you to see our work as it comes home, is displayed in our hallways, on instagram, AND is saved for our spring art show. Yahoo!
Music - We’ve started off the year on a great note in music! We’ve begun using a new class point system to encourage smart decisions in class (which has been working wonderfully so far), and have started having a “Song of the Week” (we listen to the song and talk about instruments we hear/how the song makes us feel/fun facts about the musician/composer; some songs we’ve covered so far are “As” by Stevie Wonder and the “Pas de deux” from The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky). Kindergarten to second graders have been learning about and expanding their understanding of dynamics by playing games like “Little Sally Walker” (reflecting loud or quiet dynamic levels through how high or low we’re standing/crouching) and “Closet Keys” (the class guides a classmate to a hidden object’s location by singing louder when they get closer to the object, and singing more quietly when they get farther away). Third and Fourth graders dove right into reviewing and learning more about reading rhythms (eighth notes, quarter notes, and half notes galore!), through games like “Rhythm Writes” (teams have to work together to write the 4-beat rhythm I clap and earn a point for their team if they show me the correct rhythm first), and “Rhythm Race” (teams race to find the card of the rhythm I’ve clapped). We will begin learning our Winter Concert music next week across all grades.
WL - Kindergarten started off the school year learning our numbers in Spanish! They also listened to the series by Ann Whitford Paul “Mañana Iguana”, “Fiesta Fiasco” and “Tortuga in Trouble”. First graders began by reviewing their numbers and colors in Spanish…but focused on writing! They practiced how to spell their numbers and colors by completing various worksheets. Second graders began by reviewing parts of “el cuerpo” (the body and the face). Third graders practiced “la familia” (the family) and will begin a review on “los animales” from second grade. Fourth grade reviewed “la escuela” (the school”) vocabulary and discussed Hispanic Heritage Month.
Media - Kindergarteners were introduced to the library, including how it’s organized, how to navigate it with the use of shelf markers, and how to take care of library books. They will also be learning terminology and functions of the Chromebooks and internet. First graders reviewed book care and learned how to use shelf markers. They have also been exposed to new terminology for the Chromebooks and internet, and are exploring Google Classroom. In second grade, students discussed transitioning to chapter books as well as reviewing the responsibilities that come along with borrowing a library book. Now they are turning their focus to story elements while reading various picture books. Third graders are investigating what it means to be a digital citizen, including creating strong passwords, preventing cyberbullying, and analyzing motivations behind digitally altered pictures and videos. In fourth grade, students used the thesaurus to identify shades of meaning and find appropriate synonyms based on context. They are beginning to paraphrase short excerpts to avoid plagiarism through simply copying and pasting information. Additionally, all students in grades K-4 are beginning to check out books from the library on a bi-weekly basis.
Guidance - Kindergarteners read the story Personal Space Camp by Julia Cook. They learned that personal space is the amount of space someone needs around them to be comfortable. All classes read the book A Bug and a Wish by Karen Scheuer. A bug and a wish is a method for expressing what is bothering someone and finding common ground in a conflict. It's basically an "I-statement" that can be used by children and adults. The format is "It bugs me when you take my pencil and I wish you would ask to borrow it.” As the students have conflict this will help them to solve problems on their own.
Health Office- Hosting Annual Staff Influenza Vaccination Fair; Conducting Clinical Rotation for Ramapo University School of Nursing BSN program; Conducting Health Education lessons on Handwashing and Germs for all Kindergarten classes.