CLAY ACADEMY

november 2016

We just finished our first quarter of the new school year and once again it has gone by quickly. We had many exciting things going on with our classes during the month of October, and November will be just as busy. Last month we had our Red Ribbon Week which focuses on be-ing drug free. Many parents have a tough time coming up with ideas on what their children should say and/or do when offered drugs or alcohol. Because of this, I wanted to provide some ideas you can help your chil-dren say and/or do if they are ever in a situation where drugs/alcohol are offered.

I’m not into that.

I don’t have time for drugs.

My mom would kill me if she found out.

I’ve got more to do with my life.

That stuff makes me sick.

Why would you use that junk.

No way. I think you just want to get me in trouble.

Always remind your children that their body and future belong to them and no one should talk them into doing something that could hurt them.

I wish all of you a safe and happy Thanksgiving this month.

MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL, Dawn Cook

Calendar of Events:

11/11/16—No school—

Veterans Day

11/16/16—Late Start—school

starts 1 hour later at 9:15 am

11/23/16—1:20 pm Dismissal

for students

11/24/16—No School,

Thanksgiving Break

11/25/16—No School,

Thanksgiving Break

Dawn O’Herron, School Nurse

To increase the awareness of proper handwashing, I will be providing a hand-

washing lesson to the elementary classes. We will be reviewing the importance of proper handwash-ing and how this helps prevent the spread of germs.

Recipe for Proper

Handwashing Wet hands with warm water

and soap.

Rub hands together for 20 seconds.

Rinse with warm water.

Turn off the water with a pa-per towel.

CLAY ACADEMY

Reading/LA block 1 In reading we are just finishing up reading our second book, Washed Up by Payal Kapadia. Students are really enjoying the new reading program we have been using, ReadyGen by Pearson. In language arts we will continue to work on dai-ly language skills, such as capitalization, punc-tuation, and spelling. Reading/LA block 2 In reading we are reading Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen. Students have been using their Chromebooks to read a digital copy of the book, and so far are very engaged and willing to participate in reading aloud. In language arts we will continue to work on dai-ly language skills, such as capitalization, punc-tuation, and spelling. Life Skills In Life Skills, students will continue working in a career research unit. Students are exploring different career options and what type of skills or education they will need to pursue that ca-reer.

Brittany Hall Middle School Teacher

Trevor Mack, Middle School

As we continue to move along in the school year, students’ fo-cus in science class have shifted. Students are putting down the books to take part in hands-on learning activities as they ap-ply what they have learned about the scientific method. Students have already conducted experiments on what makes the perfect paper airplane and have created lifeboats to hold the most pas-sengers (pennies). In November students will take part in the Bridge of Greatness competition! Along with a partner, students will research bridge formations and designs. They will use this knowledge to build their own bridge and compete with others students to decide who’s bridge can hold the greatest amount of weight.

Theresa Pedersen— Middle School/High School

Middle School Reading/Language Arts Middle school students continue to work on literary skills! We have added inferences as well as using contextual evidence when reading. One group of students continues to read When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. The other group has begun reading a short story: Robinhood! Welcome to Sherwood Forest! High School English In both novels, To Kill A Mockingbird and in Beowulf, students have worked from a website called “Storyboard That”. They have been able to se-quence their stories and details in a cell format, add-ing various details. Students are welcome to log on at home to show you their work!

Mark Tschappat P.E. & HS Health

After hearing that a couple of our students have dreams of playing in the NBA we are very excited to begin our Basketball unit. Students will be practicing dribbling, pass-ing and shooting. We are trying to talk Mr. Lewis (a former “Mr. Basketball” from his middle school days) into playing the winner of our one-on-one tournament.

The Social Work Corner

Beth Sarich- Elementary, Kady Jakubik-Middle School,

Dawn Kraneman- High School

Clay Academy celebrated Red Ribbon Week, October 24 - 28, 2016

The purpose of Red Ribbon Week is to promote a healthy drug-free lifestyle in our community. The color Red and the Red Ribbon have been a symbol of this national campaign since it officially began in 1988. The Red Ribbon is a symbol of support for Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent Enrique (KiKi) Camarena. Agent Camarena was killed in 1985 while trying to stop drug traffick-ers in Guadalajara, Mexico. In 1988, the U.S. Congress proclaimed the first Red Ribbon Week in support of Agent Camarena and the cause he gave his life for…combating drugs.

Students had the opportunity to demonstrate their healthy drug-free pledge by:

Signing drug-free pledges, participating in various school activities throughout the week and dressing in themed attire to show their drug-free support. The classrooms with the most participation for the week earned a pizza party.

Below is list of themes we had for the week:

“It’s up to me to be drug free”, Show support by wearing Red,

“Saying No to drugs is no sweat”, Wear your favorite sweats,

“We are teaming up against drugs” Wear your favorite sports team attire

“Give drugs the slip” Wear your favorite Pajamas and/or slippers and

“Sock it to drugs” Show support by wearing your favorite “Crazy” socks

Thank you for helping us create a healthy, drug-free future for the students at Clay Academy.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at (815) 337-2529.

For more information please visit the website: www.redribbonweek.org

Math This month in math we will be learning how to solve al-gebraic equations and working with various formulas. We will be solving single and multi-step equations. To-wards the latter part of the month we will be looking at rates, ratios,and proportions, application of percents, and percent increase and decrease. Students will also be solving various algebraic equations with variables on both sides of the equations. Earth Science We as humans are dependent upon our earth’s abun-dant resources. We will begin to look at the renewable and nonrenewable resources we categorize those re-sources into. This month students will be exploring en-ergy and mineral resources, as well as the alternate energy resources. Students will also begin to look at and understand the importance of conservation practic-es of our water, air, and land resources.

Michael Lewis—High School

World History: We finished learning about Greece and are finishing our sec-tion about Rome and the Rise of Christianity. We will then be taking a test on the two sections. The students are working very hard on writing two column notes for each section in the Chromebooks and then they will be able to use those notes as a reference. Math: The students are currently working very hard at understand-ing how to isolate variables within algebraic problems. The students are doing a good job of taking notes and then apply-ing those to their classroom work. We have also begun working some with writing checks and balancing our check books. Constitution: We are getting ready to take our United States Constitution test and then we will soon be moving into our Illinois State Constitution portion of the class. World Events: We still discuss things that are currently going on in the world. We have read, talked about, and watched many things that are currently going on in our Presidential race. We have watched all 3 debates. We have read about Hurricane Matthew and other important news stories.

Emily Pemrick-High School

Elementary art will be creating fall projects with various media like clay, string, paint and jewelry. Middle school students will be rotating at the start of quarter 2, so Ms. Hall’s third hour will now have art on Tuesdays and Mr. Mack’s third hour will stay in art on Thursdays. We will be experimenting with string art and other textured media in quarter two as well as dif-ferent painting styles. High school art will be finishing up their clay projects and moving on to drawing and por-traits and things from life. This will help each student focus on the details they see and de-pict items and people even more realistically. Art History students are learning about the Middle Ages and will also be learning about different cultures around the world. Art styles from African, Native American and Indian art-ists will be focused on with our multi-cultural units.

Malinda Holmer, Art Teacher

John Oslovich

All of the students have done a wonderful job during the first couple months of school. They are continuing to form and develop friendships within the classroom that allow our class discus-sions to be informative and exciting. Please continue to check your child’s backpack for their point sheet and encourage them to keep making thoughtful and respectful choices. The end of the first quarter has brought the end of our World Geography unit in social studies. The students are very excited to begin learning about the ancient world as we start our journey in Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. This will be the main focus of our social studies class for the second quarter. Please continue to send in loose change or box tops that can help us, along with the other mid-dle school classes, continue our tradition of ex-cellence in the Coin War and Box Top races.

This month in Room 1 we will be finishing up Unit 1:Part B of our literacy curriculum. Our students will be creating a non-fiction infographic about an animal of their choice. They will complete research about that animal and use the infographic to de-scribe the special features of the animal’s body. After we finish our research project, we will start a new unit on Tall Tales and Fairy Tales. In math we will be moving on to multiplying one and two digit numbers. Make sure you keep reading at least 30 minutes a day with your student to help them grow in reading fluency and compre-hension!

Catherine Cantwell Elementary (Grade 3 & 4)

Nicole Wesolowicz ,Floater Teacher, K-8

Elementary Life Skills Ms. Stewart, Mrs. Cantwell, and Ms. Krzeski’s class have taken a break from learning about health for the last few weeks. The students had the opportunity to listen and participate in a monarch butterfly presentation by a few ladies from the community. The presenters have a monarch station to track butterflies migration patterns and were able to share a lot of information and experiences with the students. They brought in photo-graphs, live butterflies, videos, a milkweed plant, and many activities for the students to do. In the classroom after the presentation, the students have been doing multiple activities that allow them to learn new information as well as deepen their understanding of the concepts covered within the presentation. We have learned about the life cycle, migra-tion patterns, colors, food, body parts and gender identifica-tion. The students have learned these concepts through reading, writing, and doing art related projects. Middle School Science In the middle school, the students have been working on FOSS Kits to showcase their understanding of the scientific method and how to be a scientist themselves. The first ex-periment lab that the students participated in involved swing-ers, which allowed them to learn about pendulums and oscil-lations. They looked specifically at the string length com-pared to how many oscillations they counted. The second experiment lab allowed the students to learn about lifeboats that were all different heights. They floated them in water to discover how many pennies each lifeboat could hold and re-lated that to water capacity. During each of these experi-ments the students had to manipulate one independent vari-able while keeping multiple control variables in order to accu-rately measure the dependent variable. They made a hy-pothesis and prediction, collected data, analyzed it and formed a conclusion to complete each lab write up.

Elizabeth Donato—Speech Pathologist Communication Skills Now that our daylight hours are shorter, it can be fun to make up stories with your kids. One person starts a silly or scary story with just a few sentences, then stop and say “and then!”, and the next person jumps in with their addition to the story. Pictures can be used to give younger ones some ideas for how to add to the stories. If family gather-ings are happening over the holidays it can be fun for everyone to make a really long silly or scary story. This is a great way to involve aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. The November speech language calendar is attached to this newsletter too.

There is an November Speech Language calendar attached to this newsletter with quick daily activities for the younger students.

Primary At Clay (Grades Pre K-1) Cara Krzeski

In math, we will continue to work on addition and subtraction problems using a variety of dif-ferent strategies. Some strategies we are working on are adding with pictures, touch math, counting on, doubles, and making a ten. Some students will start comparing numbers, meas-urement, and data.

With our new literacy curriculum, we just finished our first unit and will be continuing on to unit 2. We will be focusing on how to write an opinion piece. The students are excited to read the new books. We continue to review our sight words daily as well as handwriting practice.

Mary Stewart Elementary Grades 2 & 3

This November we are finishing our second Per-formance Based Assessment.

Room 2 has been busy researching topics in the natural world and using the writing process to create a magazine article. Be looking for your child’s article. We are learning about some pret-ty neat things!

Remember that Scholastic Book orders due No-vember 15 and our Trimester ends on Novem-ber 10th.

If I don’t see you before the holiday, have a won-derful Thanksgiving!

Travis Mohr

Elementary/Middle School P.E.

K-8 Physical Education Our Flag Football unit for the 5th-8th graders is going well and I am looking forward to do-ing the unit again next year. We will be start-ing our basketball unit where students will work on their dribbling, passing and shooting skills. The 4th grade students will be finishing bas-ketball and beginning volleyball next month. These units will focus on teamwork and sportsmanship in a competitive team setting tailored to each grade levels specific needs. Our K-3 students will finish with the parachute and move onto their balancing and coordina-tion skills.