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, April 17, 2016

Newsletter

Hi,

We had a busy and fun week.

Carnival- Our carnival on Friday was wonderful! Thank you to our PTA for all their hard work. Thank you to Mrs. Bannister for making our amazing "Dining Out" basket and thank you also to all those who donated gift cards. Thank you to Mrs. Benedetto for helping us and donating the materials for our silent auction bat painting.Thank you to all who had fun at the carnival and supported our school. It was super!

Silent Auction-Bat Painting-The class worked hard on our bat painting. They put blue tape on the bat then painted the sections with cool colors. Then they put the blue tape on the background and painted the sections with warm colors. Then they painted the spaces between the bat sections (where the tape was) with black to make the bat stand out. Lastly, they wrote their names using silver sharpie. It took many steps, but turned out looking great. Thank you to all those who bid on it. Lucky Samantha bid on our painting and won! Yay, Sam!!!! (photo attached)

Kickball Tournament-The Kickball Tournament, Kids Kicking out Hunger, will be on Sunday, May 1 at Gattis Elementary. Hopefully, your child will be there playing kickball. If you don't want to play, you can come, volunteer and cheer on Forest Creek! Let me know if you have any questions. We would love to have you all come and support Forest Creek and help us kick out hunger in Round Rock and Honduras!

Pen Pals-We had a great visit on Tuesday with our Pen Pals. We decorated little pots and planted some flowers for them. We shared some of our photos and special things with them, and many of them brought some of their interesting things to share. There was lots of talking and storytelling going on in the library! We will now work on essays about our pen pals to make a book for them. Our last pen pal visit will be on Tuesday, May 17. You are welcome to continue to visit the pen pals at The Court at Round Rock on Sunrise Road. Just call first to be sure that your pen pal is available for a visit.

Garden Box-We planted some vegetables and the rest of the pen pal flowers in our class garden box. I bet the plants are enjoying all of this rain. Hopefully, they won't drown. :)

Mindfulness-We are working with a few other classes from our school and some researchers from University of Texas at Austin to try brining mindfulness into the classroom. We will use a program called Smiling Mind (smilingmind.com.au) and will listen to a short mindfulness audio each day. We will discuss our thinking and reactions to the sessions. Then beginning the week of April 25, we will add an active learning activity such as spelling freeze tag, spelling relay, etc... and then do the mindfulness session after the physically active game. We will give feedback to the researchers about the effectiveness of mindfulness in the classroom especially paired with physical activity. They will used our feedback to write a NIH grant. You can try mindfulness at home using this free program. Go to smilingmind.com.au and sign up. The program is from Australia and the accent adds to the fun of the sessions. :) Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Read about our week:

Reading-We are working on test taking strategies and working on skills that have been challenging for us on past assessments. We are talking with partners and sharing our strategies and our thinking. We are also working in some book groups and doing lots of independent reading as well as working on I-Station on the computer. Be sure to work on I-Station at home. I-Station can count as some daily reading and recorded on reading logs also. Go to FCE website, then resources, then students, then click on I-station Math, it may then ask for our school name, type in Forest Creek Elementary, then log in using s###### (student number) password=###### (student number with no S). You may have to download I-Station onto your computer or I-pad. Once downloaded, play games and work on literacy activities everyday!

Writing-We are working on using mentor texts to influence our writing. We read When I was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant and tried writing a "When I....." entry. We also read lots of poems from various poetry anthologies and tried writing more poetry. This week we will continue with more free writing, then will pick a piece to revise and edit to submit for Rising Star. We will also work on our Pen Pal stories for our pen pal book.

Social Studies-We talked more about the Texas Revolution and worked on some timelines. We will continue to research our Texas Heroes and begin working more on our projects.

Spelling-This week we will work on comparatives and superlatives such as big, bigger, biggest. Test on Friday.

Vocabulary-Last week we worked on math words and this week will be measurement words. Test on Friday.

Dates to Remember:

Monday, April 18, 2016-Wear FCE shirts, Writing Club after school from 2:45-3:45, Family Fun Night at Chick-Fil-A 5-8

Friday, April 22, 2016-Wear college shirts, Reading Response Letter due, Turn in Reading Logs, Homework Packet due, Spelling and Vocabulary test, Rising Star Entries due to teachers

Monday, April 25, 2016-Wear FCE shirts, Service Club after school from 2:45-3:45

Tuesday, April 26, 2016-4th Grade Field Trip to Bob Bullock Museum-Wear school shirts. Bring sack lunch (unless you ordered one from the cafeteria)

Friday, April 29, 2016-Wear college shirts, Reading Response Letter due, Turn in Reading Logs, Homework Packet due, Spelling and Vocabulary test-SCIENCE DAY

Monday, May 2, 2016-Wear FCE shirts, Writing Club after school from 2:45-3:45

Wednesday, May 4, 2016-Early Release Day

Friday, May 6, 2016-Wear college shirts, Reading Response Letter due, Turn in Reading Logs, Homework Packet due, Spelling and Vocabulary test

Monday, May 9, 2016-3rd & 4th GRADE STAAR MATH TEST, Wear FCE shirts, Service Club after school from 2:45-3:45

Tuesday, May 10, 2016-3rd & 4th GRADE STAAR READING TEST

Wednesday, May 11, 2016-5th GRADE SCIENCE TEST

Friday, May 13, 2016-Wear college shirts, Turn in Reading Logs

Monday, May 16, 2016-Wear FCE shirts, Writing Club after school from 2:45-3:45

Tuesday, May 17, 2016-Pen Pal Visit

Thursday, May 19, 2016-Rising Star Night, 6-7:30 pm

Friday, May 20, 2016-Wear college shirts, Reading Response Letter due, Turn in Reading Logs, Homework Packet due, Spelling and Vocabulary test, FIELD DAY 12:20-2:20

Monday, May 23, 2016-Wear FCE shirts, Service Club after school from 2:45-3:45

Friday, May 27, 2016-Wear college shirts, Reading Response Letter due, Turn in Reading Logs, Homework Packet due, Spelling and Vocabulary test

Monday, May 30, 2016-No school,Memorial Day Holiday

Thursday, June 2, 2016-Last Day of School

Thank you for sharing your child with me. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Pam
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