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, October 2, 2016

Newsletter

Hi,

We had a wonderful week.  Early Release Day went smoothly and the students behaved magnificently and worked hard on Thursday when we had a substitute.  I had a training at another campus.  

Reading-We are working with expository or non-fiction text and this week we reviewed text features (photos, captions, headings, table of contents, glossary, index, etc...) and their purposes.  We will continue to read non-fiction this week and will work on using context clues to figure out unknown words and questioning the text. We will continue to write a summary and response to text read.  

Students did a wonderful job writing reading response letters to me for homework.  If your child didn't turn one in, it is due on ASAP.  A new reading response letter will be due every Friday, unless otherwise noted.  Thanks!

Writing-We are gathering entries to write opinion papers.  We walked around the school last week and observed things.  We noticed things in our classroom. We wrote about what we noticed and pushed our thinking to write what we realized or thought about what we saw.  We will develop some thesis statements this week and begin developing reasons and examples to support our thesis statements.  (ex. Fall is my favorite season because the weather is cooler, Halloween is a fun holiday, and I love pumpkin flavored food!)

Social Studies-We are learning about tribes in Texas and learned about the Karankawa and the Caddo, so far.  We took notes then made a dug-out canoe out of clay to represent the Karankawa tribe and a dome shaped home out of clay and straw to represent the Caddo tribe.  This week we will learn about the Comanche, Jumano, and Lipan Apache tribes.  

Dates to Remember:

Monday, Oct. 3-  College Shirt Day,  FCE Service Club 2:50-3:50 in room 512

Tuesday, Oct. 4-PTA Meeting at 3:15 pm

Wednesday, Oct. 5-Flu Clinic

Friday, Oct. 7-Homework packets due,Reading Response Letter due, Spelling test, Turn in Reading Logs as you finish them, FCE Spirit Day! Wear green and purple. 

Monday, Oct. 10-No school for students/staff development

Thank you for sharing your child with me.  I hope you enjoyed your weekend!

Sincerely,
Pam
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