Bartholomew Bats!


Our school is located in Round Rock, Texas which is near Austin. Austin and Round Rock both have huge populations of Mexican Free Tailed Bats that live under our bridges. A colony of bats lives beneath the Ann Richards/Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin and in Round Rock, another colony resides under the Interstate 35 bridge over McNeil Road. Each evening from March to about October, the bats fly out from beneath the bridge and search for insects to eat. The emergence of the bats is a wonder to watch. We are also thankful that all these millions of bats eat the bugs by our homes.

Our class mascot is the Bat to honor the mammals that live so close to us and help us. (also because Bat and Bartholomew both start with the letter B!) The bats in Central Texas live together in a group and help take care of the young. Then they migrate together as a team. Our class will also live together in our classroom, work together as a team, and help each other out. We are the Bartholomew Bats!





Sunday, January 30, 2011

Newsletter-January 31

Hi,

It is hard to believe that February is here already! This year is moving quickly.

On Friday, we had a wonderful visit with our pen pals. Mrs. Arnold invited us to work with her on the district's Empty Bowl Project. An art teacher in the district received a service learning grant to make ceramic bowls, then sell them with food inside donated from local restaurants and use the money to help the Round Rock Serving Center. A customer pays $10 for the soup or food and the handmade bowl and then keeps the bowl. The Empty Bowl Event will be happening in early April and I will let you know about the details when they are finalized. The children and our pen pals had a fantastic time using clay to create these beautiful bowls. Every child and pen pal made a bowl and all of the bowls are magnificent! The bowls will dry for about two weeks then Mrs. Arnold will fire them in her kiln. Everyone will glaze their bowls during our pen pal visit to FCE in March. We will be traveling to The Court to see our pen pals again on the morning of Valentine's Day. It will surely be a LOVE-ly trip. :)

Reading-Many of us started some independent research projects this week. Each child will come up with a topic and some questions that they want answered about that topic. We will be finding books in the library as well as using RRISD approved kid-friendly search engines to gather information. We will be learning about bibliographies and plagerism as well. The information learned by the student will be compiled into a project. The child will choose the type of project. These independent research projects will be ongoing. Some students may do several throughout the year. Others may do only one or two. The children will work at their own pace.

We also began reading biographies in small groups. We tried a technique that I read about in an article in The New York Times about "retrieval testing".

Here is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/science/21memory.html

The article talked about a study during which groups of college students were asked to read a scientific passage then were divided into 4 groups-1 group just read the article once for 5 minutes, 1 group studied the article in four consecutive five minute sessions. A third group read the article and looked back to the article to make a concept map of information learned. The last group read the article then wrote in essay format everything they could remember about the article (retrieval testing). They then reread the article and again engaged in retrieval testing. All of the students were given a test two weeks later and the retrieval testing group out performed the others.

We are in the process of trying this with some of our groups in class. They read a few pages of their biography then wrote as much as they could remember from the pages read. Then reread the pages and added to their first essay. We will continue trying this strategy for the rest of these books then the students will take a short test on their book. Two weeks later we will be take the test again and see if we remember. It will be interesting to see what we discover in two weeks! If it seems effective, we may try this strategy more often!

Writing: Most of us finished up our personal narratives and are beginning to gather entries and ideas for our next piece.

Math: We will be finishing up decimals and fractions (although we will keep coming back to these concepts all year.) At the end of this week/beginning of next week we will begin geometry.

Science: This week we learned about renewable and nonrenewable resources. We also began our science project presentations. They will continue this week.

Science Night, Math Night, and Book Fair-Friday, February 4 at FCE-Come and join the fun. See all the creative science projects as well.

Dates to Remember:

Monday, January 31-Service Club Meeting Rm 512 2:45-4:00

Thursday, February 3-Community Meeting with RRISD Superintendent-Waterloo Icehouse- 5:30-7:30

Friday, February 4-Wear Red today to support heart health. Science Night, Math Night and Book Fair 5pm-8pm

Monday, February 7, 8, 9- Book Fair in the library: 7:30am-4 pm

Monday, February 14-Visit with Pen Pals 9:45-11:15 am, Valentine's Day Party-1:55-2:40pm, Set up for Writing Camp-2:45-?

Thursday, February 10-Writing Club 2:45-4:00 (Come write with us!)

Tuesday, February 15-18-Writing Camp! Yeah!!!!!!!

Tuesday, March 1-Writing TAKS test for 4th graders

Thank you for all that you do at home to support your child. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
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