Weekly News: November  30- Dec. 4

Our School Mission Statment is: St. John School is a Christian Community filled with the Holy Spirit and guided by God's word and Roman Catholic teaching and tradition. The main focus of our school is not only to provide quality education, but also to grow together in holiness, prayer, faith and love. This community with parents, teachers, and students combined is a growing family working together to educate the total child in matters of the mind and spirit, while encouraging, artistic and physical development.

. Meeting the individual needs of each student will be my primary goal. I will communicate with you through my web page and for the first few weeks will send a copy of the web page home. You may access our web page at home or in the library before and after school. Please feel free to set up an appointment either before or after school to discuss your child's progress. Let's work as a team to make this a successful year.

Show and Tell will be on Fridays. Please send in only one item in a box or bag, or perhaps your child just wants to tell something.

Just a reminder about our grading scale:E is excellent, G+ is very good, G is good, S+ is very satisfactory, S is satisfactory, N is needs improvement, and P is Poor, below grade level

Conduct code: (1) means consistently follows rules or usually follows rules (2) means inconsistently follows rules or behavior could improve (3) means does not follow rules

***Reading :

New Story: Beth's Job. This is Realistic fiction: it could happen in real life. We will be reviewing possessive  's.. which shows ownership.

New vocabulary: don't, her, line, Mr., new, says, water

..I am so proud of our Super Stars for reading , reading, and reading!!!!! . Reading Books are to be brought home daily. Please see the list of decodable words, spelling words and high -frequency words (sight vocabulary) that go with each story.. Please return this book the very next day. Some students will also have a spiral notebook in their Reading Bags, to write down the name of the supplemental book they will bring home most nights. Please write the name of the book, the author and any new words or difficult words. Comments may also be written. Also, return this book when your child has completed it and another book will be sent home. You may also list other books read at home on the left side of the spiral page. Happy Reading!

Your child will also bring home leveled readers to share with you. Some of these books will be Steck-Vaughn Pair-It books (fiction and non-fiction that pair together) , Max books, and Scholastic books. We are focusing on elements in the stories such as, main idea, setting, characters, sequencing, vocabulary, problem/solution and comparing and contrasting. We use critical thinking and reasoning skills in every subject every day!

It is the Parents responsibility to pay for the replacement of lost books, so please help your child remember to keep them in their backpacks. Thanks for your cooperation!

Writing Rubric: We are following the 4 writing steps...pre-writing, first draft, revising, editing, final draft)

Looking forward to learning in all the following subjects:

***Spelling:

Words for  Test got Friday Dec. 4th: lake, bake, does, food, grow, live, hive,many, any.  Is the cub on the bus?

Spelling homework is:

Monday: write the words 1-6 three times

Tuesday-write the words 7-12 three times

Wed. : write sentences with 6 of the words..Optional to write sentences with all of them!

***Handwriting: We are following the Zaner-Bloser program. Please review the correct formation of letters on the sheet being sent home and make sure your child is holding the pencil correctly and is writing letters the correct way.

***Phonics:

We are working on long vowels! Rule: when a word has two or more vowels, the first vowel does the walking or talking, or says its name and the second or last vowel does the walking, or is silent or is asleep. Please encourage your child that if they try the short vowel and the word does not make sense, then try the long vowel sound. Some words follow no rules....they just have to be memorized.

Remember the ( ed) ending added to a word can have 3 different sounds...ed says its name as in wanted: ed makes the (d) sound as in called; and ed makes the t sound as in jumped. We are also working with identifying the root words...in helped, the root word is help..Watch for work with adding (ing ) to words.

We are worling in forming compound words: backpack, playground

We will continue to review consonants and vowels.(short a . short i, and short 0) Remember the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and that all the other letters of the alphabet are consonants ( not continents)!- Students will be individually assessed these first weeks.

***Social Studies (Geography)

Thanks for the wonderful and unique time lines.

We are beginning Unit 2: At Home With My Family

Vocabulary to know : family, change, money, choice, holiday.

Help your child learn their address and phone number.

***Math:

Chapter 5: Adding to 10 by counting on,using number line

Now is the time to memorize facts to, 12 in both addition and subtraction this year. We are doing a program called Mad Minutes,so watch for these sheets to come home to practice at a later date.

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Science:

Please send in a 2 liter soda bottle , sliced a little above the half mark. by Oct. 13th so we can make terrariums.

Chapter 2 : Energy: Vocabulary: sun, food groups Test will be Oct. 28th

We are using inquiry skills...by being able to communicate, make a model, hypothesize, draw conclusions, sequence events, measure, observe, predict, plan an investigation, and infer. We will also use scientific tools and a hands on approach to reach our objectives. So as you can see, we will be having a lot of fun!

***Religion:

Chapter 4: Zaccheus climbed a tree to see Jesus, so jesus went to dinner at his house, John the Baptist was Jesus' cousin who told people to put Jesus first in their lives and to trust is to believe in someones love for us. Test Oct. 26th T

Chapter 3: Jesus grew up in a family. Vocabulary: God, Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Holy Family, Christmas, Nazareth, Jewish, Bethlehem.

The Church:

Parish: St. John the Evangelist Catholic Community Church

Pope: Pope Benedict XV1

Bishop: John Ricard

Priest: Rev. George Zieba, C.R.

Deacons: Earl Mirus and Tim Warner

The Blessed Trinity (one God in three persons),the sign of the cross is a prayer to the Blessed Trinity. Prayers to practice and know are the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary.

Character formation: We are discussing and practicing the following every day:

1. It's your choice to make good choices

2. wait and cool off if you have a problem ,try to ignore and walk away from confrontations

3. share and take turns

4. talk out your problems with an adult you can trust

5..tell someone who is bothering you to stop and then tell an adult

6.apologize and forgive

Keep up the great work!

Mrs. K. Trunzo