Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi,

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to go on a trip over the Thanksgiving break to Honduras with a group of friends. One of my friends has a non-profit organization called Friends of Los Ninos which helps to support an orphanage and some homeless villages.

Our FCE Service Club made friendship bracelets for the children and our class wrote letters for the children in English and Spanish.

While we were there our group was able to give food (rice, beans, and lard which will feed the family for a week) to 26 families in the village at Mt. Olives. We also gave clothing, holiday presents, and a trip to the movies to the children at Copprome Children's Home. We played games, helped with homework, danced, blew bubbles, drew pictures, and wrote letters.

Another group from Tennessee also helps support the orphanage and made some videos on youtube. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g6bc3IK4oI&feature=autoplay&list=ULgNjBSNjIBIU&playnext=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E8DfzN5bik

Thank you to the FCE Service Club for helping make friendship bracelets. The children loved them. They also enjoyed the pictures and the papers with drawings and words in English and Spanish. Trying to pronounce the words in English was challenging for them but they loved it.

Thank you to our 4th grade class for writing bi-lingual letters for the kids. They loved seeing your photos and your beautiful artwork and worked hard to try to read the letters in English. Many of the children wrote back to us in Spanish.

Our class and the FCE Service Club will continue to look for ways to help the children in Honduras and let them know that Tejas really does mean friend.

This week we will be working on:

Reading-reading non-fiction and historical fiction and making inferences, discovering themes, and writing summaries

Writing-writing personal narratives as well as essays

Math-division and fractions using manipulatives and imbedded in problem solving situations

Science-Electricity, insulators, conductors

Social Studies-Stephen F. Austin and Empresarios

Be sure to attend Passport to Adventure:Literacy Night on Thursday, November 29 from 5-7pm at our school. (See note sent home Monday and attached flyer)

Don't forget that math homework is due the next day. Students should be reading and recording on their book log daily. On Friday the following assignments are due:
3 reading responses and 1 writing entry. On Friday, we will have tests on our word sorts and the conventions sentences. Science test on Electricy, Insulators, and Conductors will be on Monday, December 3.


Photo Retakes are on Wednesday, November 28.

Writing Club will meet on Thursday, November 29 from 2:45-3:45 in the library.


The FCE Service Club will volunteer at the Round Rock Serving Center on Saturday, December 1 from 9-10 am. All are welcome!

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew

Groovy Newsletter!

Hi,

Today was Groovy! We all had fun pretending we were in the 60's today! The kids did a great job performing in the Groovy-o-Rama. Our class had many singing solos and speaking parts and they all did very well! We hope you enjoyed the performance also and had fun singing along!

In honor of Veterans Day, Forest Creek invites Veterans to join their student for breakfast on Monday, November 12th. Breakfast is free for military Veterans and will be $1.50 for adults and guest children accompanying Veterans on the 12th.

Pen Pals are coming on Tuesday, November 13 at 10:00am! We will be meeting in the computer lab and sharing some technology with them. We created some awesome Thanksgiving themed graphs using Excel this week and are working on making some videos of our reader's theaters to present to them. On Monday we are planning on making a power point presentation to share with our pen pals as well as exploring some cool interactive Thanksgiving sites. Come and join us!

Sage, our python, had to go home to Living Science on Thursday. We had fun observing and writing about Sage. We have ordered a tree frog and it will arrive on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Read about our week!

Reading: We are doing a great job completing books with our book club groups and sharing about the books together. We also enjoyed making inferences from poetry this week. We watched the video from the first moon landing with Neil Armstrong then read a poem called Moon. We made inferences (background knowledge + text clues= inference) about some tricky words and about the poet's meaning. We learned about personification because the poet gave the moon human characteristics. We also reviewed poetry vocabulary such as line breaks, stanzas, rhythm, rhyme, free verse, and lyrical. Reading and summarizing articles about tribes in Texas was also completed well this week.

Writing: Writing pen pal letters is always a great experience for us. We brainstorm possible ideas and then the kids form their paragraphs on their own. These letters included stories about Halloween, football, and Sage, the snake. They also asked questions about Halloween and Thanksgiving and shared their excitement about our upcoming visit. We also continued writing about things we notice and wonder in detail then pushing our thinking to get to some bigger themes and ideas. Watching a video about a soccer team in Thailand who made their own field and practiced in harsh conditions was inspirational as well as fascinating for them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4oA3kkAWU (Reading the subtitles was also fun!) Then they all wrote their thoughts, questions, impressions, and big ideas about these young boys following their dream. Going outside and around school to notice things and write about them was also interesting and we have some very deep thinkers in our class! We are going to write some Thanksgiving essays and personal narratives but will continue to work on observing, noticing, writing about it, then pushing ourselves to analyze our observations for deeper meaning. We also wrote cards and letters for veterans to receive at our Veteran's Day Breakfast on Monday.

Math: Problem solving is our focus. We practice many skills by working on multi-step problems. We solved some this week in which we needed to interpret bar graphs, we worked more on elapsed time within problems, as well as multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction in context. Sharing all of our strategies for working with multiplication and division by 9 was interesting and informative. We will continue to challenge ourselves in math.

Social Studies: Reading articles about Native tribes in Texas confirmed some beliefs we had and taught us some new facts.

Science: We worked on experimenting with forces this week. We made a pendulum and took data on the amount of time needed for pendulum of different lengths to complete ten swings. We also explored friction using a wooden sphere and wooden cylinders on various surfaces. We took our vocabulary test on forces today and will be studying for a test that will be given next Thursday.

Service Club met and made more bracelets and notes for me to take to Honduras on Nov. 17. I will be going on a trip to help in an orphanage and with some homeless in Honduras with my 15 year old daughter and some friends. We will take the beautiful cards, and bracelets for the children in the orphanage. Next week, our class will be writing some poems and/or picture books or cards in English and a little Spanish for the children. I will be gone the week of Thanksgiving but will be returning on Saturday, Nov. 24 with lots of photos and many stories to share with the class.

Dates to Remember:
Monday, November 12-Veterans Day Breakfast
Tuesday, November 13-Pen Pal Visit at 10 am in computer lab
Thursday, November 15-Energy and Forces Science Test, Writing Club 2:45-3:45 in library
Friday, November 16-Movies in the Park, 7PM
Wednesday, Nov. 21-Sunday, Nov. 25-Thanksgiving Holiday-Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, Nov. 29-Writing Club 2:45-3:45 in library, Passport to Literacy Night for families from 5-7pm
Saturday, Dec. 1-Volunteering at the Round Rock Serving Center 9-10am

Have a great weekend! Thank you for sharing your children with me. They impress me each day with their creativity and their interesting comments.

Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew

Newsletter-Fun Halloween Week but still working hard

Hi,

We had a fun week and worked hard while having fun with some Halloween activities.

We completed our Class Book and will be sending it off to the publisher today. We brainstormed ideas about fall with our pen pals and many of us wrote some fall poetry with them. We then took our notes back to class, read lots of poems, discussed poetry vocabulary (stanza, line breaks, rhythm, rhyme, free verse, lyrical, metaphor, simile, imagery, word choice, etc...) and wrote more poems. We revised and edited and typed our poems for a page in our class book. Then decorated a page with photographs of our pen pals and us together during our visits. All together the book turned out very well. If you still want to make a purchase, get the money to me by the end of the day. You can still order books after they are published but it costs a little more. Our published book will be here before the December break. Also our Pen Pals coming on November 13 at 10:00. Come join us for the visit.

Sage, our python until Thursday, is doing well. She is less active now that she is warmer. (We put a heating pad under her cage and that has made her very happy.

Read about our week:

Reading-This week we have been learning about poetry and reading tons of poems. We compared and contrasted a lyrical and free verse poem. We also used technology to watch two filmmakers interpretations of the same poem. The poem, Enter this Deserted House, was made into videos by two different filmmakers. One had images of nature but a creepy kind of voice and then one part of the poem talked about goblins and showed a shark grabbing a seal. It ended with a message about taking care of our planet. We talked about how the pictures at first were pretty but the voice was scary which increased suspense to the shark part but we liked the message. The other filmmaker used clips from Psycho and had video of the Bates motel. The images, the voice, and the background sounds were all creepy and dark right from the beginning, and there was a surprise at the end which made them scream. It was so fun to see the ways that different people can use media and interpret poetry very differently. It was also fun to be a little scared. We will be learning more about poetry next week.

Writing-Charlie Brown helped us practice writing essays this week. We watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown while taking notes about two central ideas. One central idea was that Charlie Brown should not trust Lucy. Another was Linus truly believed in the Great Pumpkin. We watched and took notes on examples and reasons to support our central ideas. We talked about Charlie Brown and Lucy and I modeled an essay using that central idea and our supporting details and elaborating on each to make complete paragraphs. Then wrote a conclusion. The children used the other central idea and wrote about essays with supporting details and elaboration giving examples that show Linus believing in the Great Pumpkin. We revised and edited today and will be writing our final copies today. We will continue writing essays next week and writing some more poetry as well as letters to our pen pals.

Math-We have been working on elapsed time, temperature, interpreting bar graphs, math vocabulary, combinations, and problem solving. We did a logic problem and used a grid and clues to figure out which boy wore which costume and had which favorite candy. We made all possible combinations if we had three types of pumpkin stickers, two hat stickers, and two accessories stickers. We shared lots of strategies to figure out all possibilities including a tree diagram and multiplication. We did some challenging math puzzles as well and talked about how it is ok to be frustrated with a problem but to keep working on it and sticking with it trying new things, talking to others, and many times we can figure it out. We reminded each other of the quote by Einstein saying, "I am not smarter. I just stick with problems longer." I am impressed with how many interesting strategies the kids come up with for problems and how receptive the others are to trying out new strategies.

Social Studies-Explorers in Texas have been our focus this year. We are discussing the lives of Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, and La Salle. We have discussed that the Europeans were conquering new lands with the goals of God, Glory, and Gold in mind. The Spanish did a lot of exploring in Texas then stopped for about 100 years when they didn't find gold, however, their interest in the land in Texas increased again after the French and La Salle started to claim some land. That is when the missions and the converting of the natives began.

Science-We will be continuing with our study of energy next week.

Dates to remember:
Saturday, November 3-Volunteering at the Round Rock Serving Center from 9-10
Tuesday, November 6-Election Day-Be sure to vote!
Thursday, November 8-Service Club Meeting from 2:45-3:45
Friday, November 2-Fundraising orders coming home today
Friday, November 9-Groovy-o-Rama 4th grade performance at 10 am
Tuesday, November 13-Pen Pal Visit at 10 am in library
Thursday, November 15-Thanksgiving Meal at school

Have a great weekend and let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you for sharing your children with me.

Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew