Hawk Newsletter

Dear AJ Mitchell Families,

As the beautiful colors of autumn continue to surround us, we approach November with a spirit of gratitude for our vibrant school community. This time of year reminds us to pause and reflect on all that we have to be thankful for.

I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of you for your continued partnership. Whether you’re reading with your children, helping with homework, or participating in our school events, your involvement is crucial to our students’ success. Thank you for entrusting us with the education and guidance of your children.

This month, our students will be focusing on the character trait of gratitude. I encourage you to ask your children about what they are thankful for, and how they show appreciation to others.

Our school staff is also deeply grateful for the opportunity to work with such dedicated students and families. We are so proud of the progress our students have made this fall, and we look forward to a strong finish to the semester.

Wishing you all a wonderful month and a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday with your loved ones.

Warmly,
Christina Dang

AJ Mitchell Principal

In many academic situations students who are struggling with something will say I can’t do it, it’s too hard, I don’t know how. It’s important to teach kids to have a growth mindset.

What is a growth mindset? A growth mindset is the belief you can develop your strengths through hard work, dedication, perseverance, practice, and grit. How can you teach your child to have a growth mindset?

1. Praise Effort over Results (I love how hard you tried. You worked every problem out on your own!)

2. Frame Mistakes as Part of the Learning Process (Mistakes help me learn.)

3. Reward Effort and the Process (We are going to have ice cream tonight because you read every word of your book out loud and while you were answering the reading questions you looked back in the text to find the answers.)

4. Teach positive self talk (I can do this! I am going to keep trying even though it is really hard.)

The Parent Teacher Organization would like to extend a warm thank you to all the volunteers that came to help with this years Haunted House. It looks awesome! The students are super excited to see what’s inside. As well as with the outpour of support with donations for the games and decorations loaned to us by some of our AJ Mitchell families. We are sure to say this years Fall Festival will be just as fun as last years if not even better. Thank you all for making this event possible. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts. Hope to see you soon volunteering in future events.

We are looking for parent volunteers to help decorate for upcoming musical performances. Please reach out to Ms. Cabrera if you would like to help.

For the K-1 performance students are able to dress up for the performance. The students need to arrive in the cafeteria at 4pm for a 4:15 start time.

Over the next month, our class will learn about what makes a community. We will read books about the people and places in a community, and the ways in which we all work together to make a community strong.

BIG IDEA WORDS : -- Reinforce these important topic words when you are reading or talking with your child:

• community
• location
• neighbor

WORDS TO KNOW: - Practice reading and spelling these words that children will see a lot in books they read: an, did, has, he, in, it, me, put, ran, she, sits, with

Counting Sequence to 100,

Count to 100 By Ones.

Count to 100 by Tens.

Count Forward from a Given Number

Compare Numbers to 10, Identify Greater, Lesser and Equal.

Compare by Counting, Compare by Matching.

The first-grade group has been working diligently on sentence writing, discovering how fascinating it is that a single punctuation mark can change the meaning of what they read. In mathematics, these young learners have been identifying unknown digits in addition and subtraction problems, exploring the beauty of the universal language in all its forms. We are also proud to recognize our students who received honors at the recent assembly for their exceptional effort, dedication, and academic achievement.

ELA - 2nd grade is wrapping up Module 4, a unit on storytelling. Next up is all about leadership and what it takes to be a good leader. Our big idea words are admire, inspire, and pioneer. In reading, our focus will be test features and organization, main idea and details, and summarizing. For reading foundations, it's going to be long o (o, oa, ow), long i patterns and silent letters, and homophones.

Math - We continue to learn about place value and skip counting by fives, tens, and hundreds within 1,000. Keep practicing skip-counting whether your child is at home or out and about. You may also come up with games and other opportunities for them to skip count. Next up will be about coins. Children will relate place value to coins, identify and find the value of coins, compute the value of coin combinations, and show amounts of coins in different ways. So, gather all your spare change at home and have fun with your child sorting and counting them.

Science and Social Studies - In science, we're warring up our lesson on properties of matter and will be moving on to lesson check. Up next, we're going to explore what objects are made of and we'' find out what types of materials go together best when building a specific object. In social studies, we are responding to the essential question, Why is it important to learn about the past? and How does geography help us understand the world?

Monthly update for 3rd grade:

For ELA students will be working on stories and media that give them information about the features of drama. As students build their vocabulary and synthesize topic knowledge, they will learn more about the value of drama and the key differences between stories and plays.

For Math they will continue to work on relating division and multiplication problems. This is an important skill for students to develop in order to master basic facts.

Dear 4th Grade Parents,

Another month is flying by, and we continue to teach students with strategies to help them master and succeed in their learning. Some highlights this month include noticeable progress in reading skills—especially in fluency, accuracy, and comprehension.

We are also setting new goals for our students: reading 159+ words per minute by the beginning of December, and mastering multiplication and division standards by applying a variety of strategies and using manipulatives.

Please continue to practice multiplication facts, spelling words, and sight words at home. Remember that attendance is very important—being here every day helps students continue making progress and reach their goals. Students have to do their lessons assigned on My Path Reading and My Path Math as homework.

If you would like to learn more about the strategies we are using in math, or if you have questions about how to support your child with reading, you are welcome to send us a message on the Thrillshare App and set up an appointment!

Thank you,

4th Grade Teachers

5th grade is studying about the changes in matter in science and in social studies we are learning about the American revolution. We are digging deeper into multiplication and division of fractions in math, and in ELA we are learning about the Wild West (main idea and key details)

• Absenteeism and its effects start early.
• Poor attendance can influence whether children read proficiently by the end of third grade or be held back.
• By 6th grade, chronic absence becomes a leading indicator that a student will drop out of high school.
• Research shows that missing 10 percent of the school year, or about 18 days in most school districts, negatively affects a student's academic performance. That's just two days a month and that is known as Truancy and can be sent to law enforcement.
• When students improve their attendance rates, they improve their academic prospects and chances of graduating.