An Attitude of Gratitude - Beginning with Yellow Ribbon Week, we've been practicing kindness throughout the school day. In fact, we came up with the idea of writing our own Kindness Grams on yellow paper. These short notes have been written to classmates, friends in other classes, former teachers, and other adults working at our school. Many adults who's received one of our notes have mentioned how it made them feel special and appreciated to receive a kind note out of the blue. It's a practice we're going to continue.
Music with Mrs. Acitelli - Just before the winter break, we began our second trimester arts class, Music with Mrs. Acitelli. So far, we've played both drums and keyboard instruments (glockenspiel and xylophone) in addition to all the singing we are doing. At the end of our music classes, we will have a Studio Day when our families are invited to attend. I will announce the date for your calendar as soon as it's confirmed.
As we work with musical notation in music class, we've noticed the connection between written music (with its quarter notes, half notes, and eighth notes) and fractions, so we've been working on fractions in math. We've also discovered the relationship between fractions and division, which fits in nicely with our multiplication and division work previously.
As with all of our arts classes at Keppel, music classes are only made possible with the support of MKS (Make Keppel Special), so a big THANK YOU to everyone who supports MKS, especially through an annual pledge to the MKS Fund.
A New Project in the Cybrary - Mrs. Dow, our librarian, paid us the ultimate compliment by asking us to assist Ms. Hohensee's first graders on a special project: a "Me" collage. In order to teach our first grade buddies, we are also learning! We are using the Google Drawings program. We've learned to take a selfie, position it on the page, crop and resize, search for images, and place them to make an attractive collage that represents and tells about us. Please ask your child to show you their work --- it's all saved in Google Drive on their GUSD Google account.
i-Ready Diagnostic Results & Homework Update - I hope that you noticed in last week's Thursday folder the parent report for the midyear i-Ready diagnostic tests (math & reading) attached to the homework update. Your child's assigned weekly reading and math homework has been updated based on their i-Ready diagnostic test results. Weekly small group intervention classes with Ms. B (we call them "hallway classes") have also been restructured based on those results.