1 Volume 1, Issue 20 September 30, 2008 NEWSLETTER: October 2008 Graymont Grade School Newsletter Lots of things have been going on here at Graymont Grade.

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Volume 1, Issue 20

September 30, 2008

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Lots of things have been going on here at Graymont Grade School during the last few weeks. We finished out September with STS Testing for 1st – 8th grade students and will use the results when we get them back later this fall to gauge where the students are academically at the start of this school year. We also had our PTO Pork Chop Dinner and Silent Auction on September 26th. It was well attended and very successful. Thanks so much to all those who donated items and put in time to make the event so valuable for the school children. The Pontiac High School Chorus and Marching Band also visited Graymont on September 23rd. They presented a nice program for our students and gave them an opportunity to see the fun they might have if they pursue music at the high school level.

We have several important events coming up in October. Picture day is on October 2nd. This is always a day that the students look forward to. We also have two field trips scheduled. The 1st – 6th grade will attend the Conservation and Agriculture Expo at the Livingston County fairgrounds on October 9th. In addition, the 5th – 8th grade will travel to Funk’s Grove Gem and Mineral Museum on October 17th. I’m sure both of these trips will be fun and educational for the students. We also have the end of the first nine weeks on October 17th, followed by Parent Teacher Conferences on October 23rd and 24th. Please contact the school office to set up a conference. At the end of the month, we will celebrate Red Ribbon week. This year’s theme is “Don’t Let Drugs Haunt Your Life.” Several fun activities are being scheduled which will remind the students to abstain from using drugs and alcohol.

The school district budget for the FY 2009 school year was approved at the last school Board meeting. Projections indicate that revenues will exceed expenditures overall and this position, along with the fund balances from prior years, puts the school district in a very favorable financial position. The budget is posted on the school website at www.rookscreek.k12.il.us. One expenditure for the district that the district will incur, will take place at the school in October. It is an upgrade of the computer wiring in the building, as well as setting up a wireless network. This should make the computer network in the school much more effective for the students and teachers.

On a final note, there will be a School Board election in April 2007. Four positions will be voted on at that time. Rusty Rich, Matt Jacobs, Matt Dewald, and Stephanie Robinson hold those positions currently. Nominating petitions for the election can be picked up at the school office starting on October 28th. They will need to be turned in on school days between January 20th and January 26th. More details will be shared, as well as, announcements regarding incumbents who plan to run for the Board as the election date moves closer. I hope you have a great fall season. Nice weather, leaves changing color, football, bonfires, wiener roasts, hay rack rides and other activities make the fall a wonderful time of year. Rest assured that we are making the most of this great season at Graymont School to keep our students working hard at their educational pursuits. Thank you for your encouragement and support in this effort.

Bill James

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The student council will be having a Fall dance on Friday, October 24 from 7:00 – 9:00 pm. Students 5-8 grade are welcome to attend. Each Graymont student is allowed to bring two guests who must also be in grades 5-8. Tickets to the dance are $3 a piece.

Student council is in charge this year of decorating the school for Red Ribbon Week which is October 27th through October 31st. We have come up with some great ideas.

Student Council Up and Coming Activities: • Penny Wars will be held in November. The money collected will be donated to Hunter Gerdes’s family. Hunter was recently diagnosed with Leukemia and is currently in Memphis Tennessee at the St. Judes Hospital.

• Graymont Warrior T-Shirts/Sweatshirt sales will also be held in November. Look for future communication on that closer to November.

Athletics

Student Council

Speech TeamSpeech Team competition this year will be held on Saturday, November 8th at Prairie Central Jr. High in Forest. Students have had their selected speeches since the beginning of September and should be working to memorize their parts. I will be starting after school speech practice starting the first week in October. I will put a sign up sheet in the classroom for student to choose a time that is convenient for them. Please make sure your child has a ride when practice is over. A speech team t-shirt order form has been sent home. If your student would like to order a t-shirt, please return the form and money back to me by Friday, October 3rd. If you have any questions, please give me a call at the school 743-5346. ~Ms. Wilson

Our boys made it to Regionals, but unfortunatley lost to St. Anthony. We are very proud of their hard work and efforts throughout the season. Girls softball has also come to a conclusion. After several rain dates, they played Regionals against Indian Creek and were not victorious. Girls, great effort this season, you really put your hearts into it.

Basketball season has already started for the girls. Our only girl player this year is ABBY LEGNER!!! Basketball for the boys is just around the corner. The players this year include: Dallas Burns, Stevie Carroll, Justin Rich, Shane Burns, and Matt Elliott. Please come out to support our players

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Mrs. Erickson - Kindergarten

Extra, Extra, Read All About It!!!

Mrs. Hinz – 1st/2nd

Cont……

October will be an exciting month for our class. We will be doing a great deal of hands-on learning as we work with pumpkins and spiders and other scary things!

The class will finish all of the letter/letter combinations during the month of October. We will then move on to creating and reading 3 and 4 letter words.We will be using a new CD-Rom created by Jolly Phonics to help each child continue to review and work on all letters and words.

Pumpkin Math will be going on all during the month of October. We will be doing a great deal of predicting and checking our predictions against the actual measurements. We will talking about circumference, diameter, and weight in pounds. There will be lots of counting, comparing, and sorting. We will also be roasting our pumpkin seeds.

Science will also involve the pumpkin. We will be doing the life cycle of the pumpkin and doing several activities that help us remember all of the steps in the life cycle. We will actually have pumpkins in our room and will have a surprise activity at the end of the unit.

We have several new phonics puzzles and stencilets that go with our Jolly Phonics program. Thanks to parents who attended the August PTO and help our room win the Classroom Attendance prize of $25.00.

Our October book order will be a special one. For every book that our class purchases, a book will be donated to a classroom that is in need due to the recent hurricanes. This program is sponsored by Scholastic Book ClubsClassroomsCare. Thanks for ordering to help others!

Report cards and parent-teacher conference are coming up in October. I look forward to spending a bit of time with each child’s parents.

Reading is of continuing importance in 1st and 2nd grade. Both grades are reviewing letter sounds and combinations. In October, 1st grade will be working on the literary elements predicting, setting, author’s purpose, and cause and effect. While the 2nd grade is working on compare and contrast, steps in a process, graphic sources, and sequence. We will be looking at a number of stories and discussing these elements. Keep practicing and rereading those books. Just a reminder that I only change the book buddy books on Tuesday and Friday. Please make sure that your student has it at school on these days.

In math, we are joining grades and working with graphs. The 1st and 2nd graders will learn how to read and create concrete graphs, pictographs, and bar graphs, as well as, tally tables. Toward the end of the month, the grades will split again. 1st graders will move on to place value and understanding numbers. 2nd graders will review addition and subtractions facts in preparation for double digit addition and subtraction.

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Mrs. Hinz cont…

Ms. Rients – 3rd/4th Reading, Language, WritingIn reading we will discuss how setting influences a story. We will also compare and contrast characters, use graphic sources, and distinguish between realism and fantasy. We are having great discussions about the stories we read and connecting them to our own lives. In language arts, we are studying nouns. We have identified common and proper nouns, so now we move onto possessive nouns. After nouns, we will study verbs. In writing, we are the authors and illustrators of personal narratives.

Math3rd graders are reviewing adding. Even though they only have to add 4-digit numbers, they like to be challenged by adding numbers in the millions, and they can do it! Next we will do subtraction with regrouping, rounding, and using front-end estimation. 4th graders are working on the difference between expressions and equations. Then they will move onto understanding time to the nearest hour, minute, and second. They will also find elapsed time with clocks and the calendar. Both grades are practicing their Rocket Math and are zooming right along!

Science/Social StudiesWe have started our unit on rocks and minerals. Students will learn how sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks are made, as well as, act as scientists as they explore different rocks and identify their properties. There will be many experiments and activities with this unit, including making edible rocks! We will also study the rock cycle. After rocks and minerals, we will start Social Studies again where we will visit the Northeast region of the United States.

We have a field trip to the Livingston County Conservation & Ag Expo on October 9th. More information will be sent home about this event.

Both grades will be working on a new social studies unit for November. We are starting with “Communities.” We will discuss and learn about cities, suburban areas, and rural part of Illinois. We will also integrate map reading skills and communities in other countries. Both 1st and 2nd graders are studying types of sentences in language arts. We are discussing statements, questions, exclamations, and command sentences and the proper punctuation for each.

We are having fun and learning tons!

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Mrs. Hott – 5th – 8th

Ms. Wilson – 5th – 8th

We have finished our STS testing!! Everyone did a good job during our testing and we are all ready to get back to our regular schedule.

5/6 Social Studies – We have moved through Mesopotamia and are now learning about ancient Egypt both through our textbook and using the History Channel’s Engineering an Empire video. As we watch, the students are tracking the succession of Pharaohs which they will need to know for their chapter test.

5-6 Science – In our second section, we have been studying rocks and minerals. We met the rock group Sed (sedimentary), Iggy (Igneous), and Morph (metamorphic) as well as making our own sedimentary rocks (which are still drying). Check out the pictures on the web site of our class discovering the difference in crystal sizes with slow and fast cooling (relating to magma cooling).

7-8 Science – We’ve moved on through a study of vertebrates and are starting to learn about birds and mammals. Once we finish this last chapter we will move on to “Inside the Restless Earth” where we will join the 5/6 graders in the study of rocks, minerals, plate tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes (although a more in-depth study than 5/6 grade)

Math – Math for all grades is going well. We are moving at a good pace and although we took a little bit of break for STS testing, we will be right back on track.Here’s what we’re currently learning about:5th grade: some algebra concepts – using their addition/subtraction skills to write and solve expressions and equations6th grade: adding/subtracting fractions and mixed numbers as well as measures of time such as elapsed time7th grade: adding/subtracting fractions and mixed numbers and multiplying/dividing fractions and mixed numbers8th grade: Using our equation writing and solving with geometric formulas as well as solving inequalities

5th/6th Reading: We have finished Unit 1 and have moved right into Unit 2: My World and Yours and The Living Earth. We will be focusing on the reading elements: author’s viewpoint, cause/effect, generalizing, character, steps in a process, graphic sources, fact/opinion, and drawing conclusions. Remember that spelling tests are Friday morning of every week. Each students is also given at least 20 minutes of quiet reading time to work towards their quarterly AR goal.

7th/8th Reading: We will be finishing Unit 3 on Science Fiction and Fantasy by focusing on author, Ray Bradbury. Bradbury is a very influential writer of science fiction and fantasy inspiring many movie directions, such as, Steven Spielberg and Gary Kurtz.. We will then focus our attention to Unit 4 titled Learning the Hard Way. The literature in this unit will explore the ways that painful or embarrassing events can lead to growth. As usual, the students will have vocabulary words to learn and will be faced with thinking critically when answering questions from each story. Please check with your student periodically to see how they are progressing on their quarterly AR goal. 1st quarter ends October 17th.

5th-8th – Language Arts: Everyone is working very hard on Chapter 3: Verbs. Verbs is one of our more lengthy units focusing on verb phrases, verb tenses, irregular verbs, direct/indirect objects, verbs in active/passive voice, subject/verb agreement and verbs in inverted/interrupted order.

7th/8th Social Studies: We are wrapping up Chapter 3 on Canada and the United States. We did several activities including a water color painting of North America before and after glaciers. Students did an awesome job, with their water colors turning out very beautiful. Chapter 4 is on the United States today with emphasis on We the People, a Constitutional Democracy, the US Economy, and the US Culture: Crossing Borders.

Accelerated Reader: Congratulations to Madison Jeziorski for meeting her first 1st quarter AR goal. Excellent Job!

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Ms. Ores – 5th-8th Health

Special Dates to Remember• Oct. 9 – 1-6 grade Ag Expo field trip• Oct. 10 – 11:15 dismissal• Oct. 13 – No school• Oct. 17 – 1st quarter ends; 5/8 grade Funks Grove field trip• Oct. 22 – Report cards• Oct. 23 – Parent/teacher conferences 4-8pm• Oct. 24 – No school; parent/teacher conferences 8am-12pm. Student Council Dance 7-9pm

The 7th & 8th grade health class has just recently started a new chapter on mental and emotional health. The students will be able to continue to develop good mental and emotional health habits. We have been doing activities to work on avoiding conflicts and resolving them. The 5th & 6th grade health classes have also been learning about their mental and emotional health. They have been reviewing for their second test. The test will be given on September 29th. I wanted to let you all know that Red Ribbon Week will be held October 23rd-31st. The theme for this year’s Red Ribbon Week is “Don’t haunt your future with drugs.” The eighth graders have come up with the theme and are in the process of coming up with the planned events for the week. They have a special treat for the last day of the week.

The kindergarteners have continued to work on locomotor skills but we have also added manipulative skills. We have been practicing rolling, tossing, and catching. We have rolled and thrown to targets, partners and ourselves. Since we have been continuing to work on our locomotor movements, we have improved tremendously!

1st-8th grade students in PE have been working on softball. We started off with catching and throwing in the lower grades, and we worked on special situations and rules in the older grades. The students were tested on their throwing accuracy by throwing to a target.All of the students at Graymont started physical fitness testing the last weeks of September. The students will be tested on cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, muscular strength and endurance, and agility. If a student accomplishes a certain goal on all of the events he/she will earn Presidential status. This means that they are above average in their physical fitness. If they make it on some but not all, a National status will be given for their excellent performance. Once physical fitness testing is over, we will begin flag football as long as our weather stays nice.

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The year started out with 2nd grade - 8th memorizing & with the Kindergarten and 1st grade exposed to the sentence: Little Silly Squirrels Climb Trees Very Fast. Each of the beginning letters stands for an element of art: Line, Space, Shape, Color, Texture, Value and Form. These seven words pretty much cover the language of the visual arts and so it is good for the art students to have the basic foundation. We are learning that ART TALKS and that we can understand and interpret it when we know the language. Each grade has been creating projects for each of the elements. It is rewarding for me as a teacher to hear kindergartners talk about texture! cool. With this school wide curriculum, the accomplishments in creating art will increase with every passing year. When this year’s kindergarten is in 8th, I will be able to cover more advanced information. That is one of the more exciting goals for me as an educator. I enjoy writing the art curriculum for Cornell, Graymont, Pontiac Christian and Odell and customizing when needed.

Kindergarten through 4th grade have explored Vincent Van Gogh’s lines in his paintings. K - 2nd made bookmarks with lines and shapes, and 3rd and 4th created squirrels in swirly landscapes using lines that are expressive like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. They then painted with watercolors over the lines and ended up with very dramatic scenes.

5th & 6th grade started this year with form and designed 3-D dinosaurs. The 5th grade are doing a project exploring oology which is the science of an egg looking like the creature that is inside. The 5 & 6th grade students also had the option of creating dinosaur skulls, leg bones, and vertebrae and water coloring them in neutrals. They had the excitement of having several real skulls, leg bones and other bones to examine. So, the students drew sketches and are now finishing up bringing their ideas to life in model magic clay, and watercolors.

7th and 8th graders took the longer route with additional study of the elements, creating posters, and just now completing written quizzes. All did well. They also have on display in the hallway their ideas for decorating the paper mache’ bowls they have started. Each bowl is to reflect their interests and personality.There are many seasonal projects coming up involving the fall leaves, colors and textures.It is so much fun to hear the ideas of your children as they explore their world of art. Please give me a call if you have any questions.

Mrs. Sullan - Art

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The Flanagan-Cornell High School Volleyball Teamswould like to invite you to our

“Volley For the Cure”Match

This game and fund raising activities are totally devoted to raising money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer foundation. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and we are teaming up with Susan G. Komen and the IHSA to share in this

worthwhile cause.

Date: Volleyball Match on Thursday, October 9th at 6:00 PMThe Lady Falcons will take on Fisher in an HOI Conference match up.

Prize Raffles: There will be baskets of goodies for raffle. Purchase as many raffletickets as you wish to try to win the prize baskets. Tickets are $1 ea.

Survivors get in free

**All proceeds from all activities will be donated tothe Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.**

Baskets for Raffle:1. Halloween Party y BasketHalloween plates, napkins, door décor, Halloween candy, a 6 inch light up plastic pumpkin Cupcake kit (cake mix, cupcake papers and picks, frosting, and sprinkles) all in a black Trick or Treat tub.

2. Volleyball Lovers BasketA volleyball scrapbook (12x12), a volleyball scrapbook kit (paper, stickers, cut outs) a small volleyball pillow, a stadium cup (filled with a sticker, key chain, pen, magnet, and a puzzle), a sports beads jewelry making kit and a volleyball t-shirt. (Size: small)

3. Swimming Fun BasketThis basket has an inflatable tire float and a flip-flop float, a kids lobster float, a large Falcon orange towel, a pair of youth goggles, a small inflatable volleyball beach ball, and a one month free pass to the Flanagan Memorial Pool and Cardio room.

4. Booster Club BasketThis basket has a certificate for a free Gondola and 2 free bags of popcorn, an FCHS t-shirt, and a variety of concession stand candy and drink.

5. Survivor BasketThis basket is designed in honor of the Survivors in attendance. There is pink Bath and Body lotion, shower gel, a body sponge, and a pink candle, slippers, and bath towel.

Come join us in the fight against Breast Cancer!!