january08

Below are a few of the basic expectations of all Armstrong students. There is much more that is taught, but students without this foundation will struggle. Fortunately, it can all be easily practiced at home. Just as an athlete or musician practices, so must our students to gain mastery of these lifelong skills.

• Students must read every night. This will help them meet grade level expectations. One of the keys to understanding is fluency. This simply means the child reads each word without hesitation or long pauses between words.

• 2nd Graders must know all their addition and subtraction math facts such as 8+7. These basic facts need to be memorized. Second graders, must also be able to add and subtract two digit numbers.

• 3rd Graders – should have memorized their multiplication facts by now. Give your child a quick test. If he/she can tell you what 7 x 9 is without hesitation then your child is on the right track. Students must know their multiplication tables to 12.

Once again I want to emphasize the important role you play in your child’s education. Keep track of your child’s progress and stay in good communication with your child’s teacher. If you regularly see grades below a 75 in the Monday folder that is time to schedule a conference and investigate the problem or need.

For the safety of your children, please remember that students should not be dropped off before 7:30am. Our teachers and staff are not on duty to monitor your children until this time.

If a change should occur during the school day, you may come into the office before 2:30 pm to notify us. There is a list in the front office for these changes. Coming to the office to make changes should not be done on a regular basis.

Please write your child’s name inside. We have many sweaters, jackets and other winter items in our lost and found area. If you notice your child is missing clothing items, please tell them to check the lost and found area in front of the entrance to the library.

Often children try to bring toys, gameboys, MP3 players and other items to school and on the bus. Please remember that these items must be left at home. Remind your child that if they bring these items they risk losing them, or perhaps another child trying to take their items home.

Welcome back and Happy New Year!! We hope everyone had a joyous holiday season. Breakfast with Santa on December 8th was a huge success. All of the children loved seeing Santa, getting their faces painted, building a reindeer, getting a balloon sculpture, or just playing games. A special thanks to Teresa Adams for chairing this committee and also to everyone who helped that morning.

Mark your calendars for the next program on January 22nd. PTA is sponsoring Adam Miller, a folk singer from Oregon to visit Armstrong. Thank you for your continued support of the PTA.

January 18th- Eddie Eagle will be visiting PreK-4th. Eddie Eagle is a gun prevention program that teaches children what to do and what not to do if they come into contact with a gun. The program teaches children to Stop, Don’t Touch, Leave The Area, and Tell An Adult.

January 22nd -The Assistance League of Montgomery County will be presenting poison control information to Pre-K and Kindergarten. The program helps children to understand that sometimes poison can look like candy or other food and when in question to ALWAYS ASK. I encourage you to talk to your children about things in your home that could be harmful.

Happy New Year! I hope your holiday break was joyous and restful. In the upcoming month I will be checking the fourth graders’ blood pressure, if your child has an abnormal reading I will send a letter home notifying you. If your child needs immunizations please get those as quickly as possible and if they have recently received shots, please make sure the clinic has a copy. Another reminder: do not send any medication, prescription or over-the-counter to school with your child. A parent must bring it into the clinic and sign a permission form for me to administer it. I look forward to a healthy 2007.

Mike Wimmer, illustrator, is coming to Armstrong January 29. Mike is a nationally renowned artist who has illustrated many children’s books and advertising campaigns. Some of his clients include: American Airlines, Disney, Doubleday, Celestial Seasons, Harper Collins, Kimberly Clark, Milton Bradley, Procter & Gamble, Reader’s Digest, and may others. You will be receiving information in your child’s Monday folder about purchasing signed books by the illustrator as well as bookmarks and art prints. More information about Mike can be found on www.mikewimmer.com.

Our biggest annual event is just around the corner! The Scholastic Book Fair will be at our school February 11-15 and will be open during the February Family Fling on February 12. We are looking for Book Fair volunteers. If you can help, please contact Lynn Christiansen at (936) 709-3408. If you cannot volunteer, you can still help by simply spreading the word about our Fair and joining your child at the Family Fling event. You will receive more information in your child’s Monday folder.

It’s a New Year, with new opportunities for learning. We’ve grown so much since August and expectations for behavior and learning are higher now. Winter is here, so we will enjoy activities about winter and snow and we’ll be incorporating this theme into all our subject areas. Listening to stories read by you at home is even more important now, as the next report card will be the first time your child will be officially assessed on how well he or she can recall information from stories read aloud. We are improving our writing and cutting– so make sure you’re allowing your child to ‘write’ and do some art activities at home to strengthen these skills!

Welcome back! The break was much needed, but it’s time to get back in the swing of things. January will be the start of a lot of new topics in Kindergarten. For one, we are welcoming winter. We will be learning about winter weather and basic needs.

In math we will be learning about addition and of course doing more counting, since the 100^th day of school is coming up. Being a good student and knowing the rules should be a piece of cake for all, and it’s time to celebrate! We will be having a 100^th day parade while also focusing on counting to the number 100.

Welcome back! We hope you had a wonderful winter break. In January we will be learning all about winter. We will explore how animals survive in the winter and how the winter season changes the world around us. We will also spend some time learning about penguins and how they survive in the freezing world of Antarctica. In math we will start working on place value and using sets of tens and ones. We will also continue identifying and counting the value of coins, focusing on the penny, the dime, and the nickel. Please remember to send your child to school with a jacket, and name written inside, if the weather is cold. Every student will be outside for 30 minutes at recess and we want to make sure they are all comfortable. Thank you for your support.

I learned a lot about nocturnal and diurnal animals. My favorite animal of the nocturnal animals is a bat. I like bats because they hang upside down and I wish I could hang upside down too. This is the reason why I like bats.

Here we are - - a New Year! Time really flies. In reading, we are working on cause & effect, inferencing, and expository text (non-fiction reading). Our library has a good selection of non-fiction books for your child to check out. Your child needs to read and take an AR test on at least 1 or 2 of them a week. In math, our ten minute fact test is now subtraction. Your child needs to practice his/her subtraction facts a few minutes every night for homework. Also, we will begin learning subtraction with regrouping. This sometimes can be a difficult skill to grasp for a second grader. We will use manipulatives to demonstrate when and why it is necessary to regroup. We will do a unit on economics in social studies. We appreciate all your support at home to help your child accomplish his/her educational goals.

We are learning new things in second grade. We liked learning about Jan Brett because she has good stories like The Mitten and The Wild Christmas Reindeer. AR reading is really cool. We read books every single day and take AR tests on the computer. We are learning our subtraction facts. Our class learned how our body moves with muscles. We are learning to write stories about things that happened to us. We love our school.

In preparing for the TAKS we have been practicing our strategies as we analyze story elements and character traits. The students are working hard to meet their AR goals to become better readers as well as writers. We have been composing stories to practice hooking our readers as established authors do.

In math we have so much going on!! As the year moves along we are practicing all objectives daily with our Target Practice and Target the Question math program. We have been discussing probability and working on our problem solving skills by solving real world problems. Multiplication is one of our big goals this year, so we practice our facts each day as a class and with our classmates.

Third graders at Armstrong Elementary have been so busy. In social studies we have been studying economics. The students even composed a budget to better understand the vocabulary and importance of budgeting our money.

You’re probably wondering what the third graders are learning this year. I just want you to know that we are learning a lot. We have been learning to write cursive along with big hard spelling words and the traits of writing every week.

We are doing a lot of reading in school but also at home. During the day there is a lot of talking about the stories and the characters. We have created tons of different thinking maps.

Math is my favorite. We are practicing multiplication, of course, and trying to move our names on the multiplication wall!! Some other things are lines of symmetry and probability. We do word problems every day so we will know how to figure things out.

I really liked the model of the glacier that we had in our class and how it changed throughout the day. That was cool. Also, each week we get to go to the computer lab and practice some things we have learned on Study Island. That’s about it for now.

The language arts teachers have been preparing the students for TAKS Writing on March 4th. We are certainly expecting a good outcome from all their efforts. In science we will be discussing metamorphosis and starting the unit on mealworms. In math we will be reviewing all the fourth grade objectives extensively. Your child should know their multiplication and division facts by now. In social studies we are researching the Indian Wars after the Civil War and the cattle drives on the Texas Trails. Your child should be reading at least 35 minutes every night. It will make a difference.

In Mrs. Frazier’s class we have been learning about main ideas, conclusions and details. In social studies we just finished our indian reports, mine was the Caddo Indians. In math we had Vegas day. Where the kids get to work on probability and fractions. We also wrote letters to the veterans and thanked them for serving our country.

The Conroe Independent School District’s Western Art Show is held annually in January at Conroe High School. All CISD elementary, middle, junior and senior high schools participate. Ribbons are awarded to all participants by judges from the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. On January 12, eight students will represent Armstrong at the Western Art Show. They are: April Artrip, Danielle Robey, Abby Johnston, Alex Artrip, Carly Boyd, Aneyla Perez, Ciera Miller, and Wendy Vazquez.

In addition, a group of fourth grade students created a mural while listening to symphony music. The music they listened to was composed by Richard Strauss called “Hero’s Alive.” On February 9, their artwork will be displayed at the Woodlands Symphony performance at the Nancy Bock Performing Art Center. The students who created the artwork were: Hugo Duran, Jessee Baldwin, Courtlin Gaddis, Juan Rodriguez, Tristan Newberry, Joshua Miller, and Tyler Lowe.

The New Year has arrived and a big congratulations goes out to the fourth graders for a wonderful performance in their program. With that performance done the next big event will take place on February 29, 2008. On that day the second graders will perform

For the third and fourth grade students the second semester in music ushers in the unit on playing the recorder. Soon you will be receiving more information about how to purchase one of these instruments for your child. This will be our focus for the next couple of months. First graders will be furthering their understanding of singing simple Solfege patterns and playing simple rhythm patterns on non-pitched instruments. Kindergartners will start to learn some special songs that will be incorporated into their graduation program to take place at the end of the school year.

Happy New Year! We are glad to be back. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and stayed active. All of my students did an outstanding job with the Frisbee unit we had before the break. We will be kicking off the New Year with our four square unit. We will work on our hand eye coordination and learn the real rules to the game we all love.