Mustang Messages …
2014
November
The mission of Rudolph Matas Elementary School is to maintain high academic
achievement by meeting the diverse learning needs of every student
Dear Parents and Guardians,
A big thank you to the PTO and others
for helping make our Fall Fest such a
great time for everyone! The students had a terrific
time participating in all of the activities from games
to
dancing!!!!
We
appreciate
all
the
parents/grandparents who came out to join the
fun! A great time was had by all. Thanks Matas
PTO!
Parents, please continue to monitor and check your
child's homework and Accelerated reader
Points. These meaningful activities are important to
your child's school success. We are helping your
child to develop good study and reading skills that
will benefit them through high school and
college. Now is the time to develop and reinforce
these important skills in school and at home. Thanks
you for your support in helping your child reach
his/her academic potential. It is always a team
effort.
Sincerely,
Mrs. P. Helmstetter
Pre-K News - The Pre-K students are anxiously
awaiting cooler weather as we discuss changes in
weather. We are also looking forward to learning
about food, nutrition, families and Thanksgiving. Our
Family Feather Project will be due on Friday,
November 7. Each family will get a feather to
decorate and it will be added to decorate our class
turkey that will be in our hall. Be creative, use
pictures, markers, crayons to make your family’s
feather unique. It is neat to see how all the feathers
come together to make our classroom family. We
will be reviewing our colors: red, green, yellow, blue,
orange, brown, black, purple, white, pink and gray.
Point out the colors when you are with your child
and help them to see different shades such as navy
or royal blue, light or hot pink, dark or lime green
and so on. The children enjoy noticing the variations
in colors. We will be having a Thanksgiving Feast in
November before our Thanksgiving break, and more
information will follow soon. We are enjoying our
school year so far. It is incredible to see the students
change and learn and how excited they get when
they master a skill. Fun learning begins in Pre-K and
can last throughout life. While you may get
frustrated with your child’s constant questions,
especially “WHY” questions, this is a great
opportunity to learn and expand upon what is
already known? It is also fun to turn the table and
ask your child “why” and listen for their reply.
Kindergarten - We have had a lot of exciting
activities in Kindergarten. We have celebrated fall
weather, Fall Fest, Halloween and are looking
forward to Thanksgiving!
For Halloween we learned about pumpkins and
spiders! We graphed which was our favorite. We
watched how pumpkins grow on United Streaming
and sequenced the growth stages on our Activboard.
We made tons of books that we like to read at home
with our families. Reading at home, what we learned
to read in class, helps make us power readers! We
also made masks and pattern necklaces, and had a
great time at our Fall Fest!
We are looking forward to Thanksgiving and learning
about fruits and vegetables, the food pyramid,
scarecrows, Indians and Pilgrims. We will be
learning more of our letter sounds, sight words and
of course making more books to share with our
families! We are also going to dress up as Indians
and Pilgrims to eat our Thanksgiving lunch in the
cafeteria! Fall is a fun time and full of celebrations!
Ms. Davis – Kindergarten Special Ed - I hope
everyone is enjoying Fall! During the month of
November, we will continue working on letter
recognition and letter sounds. We will also work on
sight words. We will continue working on identifying
numbers 0-20 and counting objects up to 20. Along
with my wonderful assistants, we will continue to
assist your child with his or her educational and
social needs. Happy Thanksgiving!
First Grade - First Grade has been working on short
vowel sounds, consonant blends and digraphs for
the past several months. They have done an
excellent job mastering these sounds, and now we
are moving on to long vowel sounds. In English we
will continue to review common and proper nouns.
We will begin working on recognizing verbs in
isolation and in sentences. Please look for the math
classwork in your child's Red Folder. A quick review
of the classwork will help your child understand the
concepts presented in class that day. It will also
prepare your child for the daily math homework.
Remember to read the library book with your child.
AR points will count for a reading grade this 9 weeks!
Second Grade - It is a great time of the year to
remember what we are thankful for! Second grade is
thankful for the wonderful time we had at our Fall
Fest. We are also looking forward to our time off to
spend with family and friends during the holidays.
We are learning so many new skills. In Math we have
switched to Eureka Math and we diving into adding
and subtracting (the arrow way) 2 digit numbers
with and without regrouping. In Language Arts we
are reading many different types of genres and using
comprehension strategies to fully understand the
literature.
Making
inferences,
sequencing,
predicting, looking for the main idea, and drawing
conclusions are a few of our focus skills. We are also
analyzing some very interesting nonfiction texts. We
have figured out how to tell what the author is trying
to teach us. In Science second graders are
investigating the life cycle of animals. November is a
great time to look into the past and learn about the
pilgrims and the early American settlers. It will be a
busy month full of new ideas and lessons. Wow, we
really do have a lot to be thankful for!
Third Grade - Thank you to all parents and students
who helped make the Fall Fest a huge success! A
good time was had by all. This month, the students
will continue to practice previously taught Math
skills as well as rounding to the nearest ten and
hundred.
Please try to reinforce these skills at
home each day. In Language Arts, students are
enjoying “Trickster Tales from the Louisiana Bayous”,
as well as working on reading skills such as cause and
effect and inferring. Our grammar focus this month
will be on verbs. Third grade continues to study our
great state in social studies, and we are learning to
locate physical features of Louisiana and use map
skills. In science, we will be exploring “Body
Systems” and “Forces in Motion”.
There are several important happenings in
November. The students will not have school on
November 3 due to a Staff Development Day and on
November 4 due to Election Day. The Fall Break will
be November 24-28. Interim reports will be issued
before Fall Break. Remember to read over the fall
holidays. Students will need a minimum of 4
Accelerated Reader points for this nine weeks. Books
from the public library also count for AR points.
Thank you for your continuing support. We wish
you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving!
Please have a rainy day plan for your child.
Fourth Grade - The 4th graders are reading Native
American plays and folktales in Language Arts. In
Science they are studying energy and in Social
Studies they are learning about the history of early
United States. In Math the students are learning
about the process of division and multiple-step word
problems. The students will be off on Monday, Nov.
3rd and Tuesday, Nov.4th due to teacher
professional development and Election Day.
Remember to check your child’s agenda nightly for
assignments and notes.
Fifth Grade - This October and November 5th
Graders are learning all about Explorers. Students
will be assigned an Explorer Project where they have
to research even more information about one
explorer! More details about the project will be sent
home soon! In Reading class, 5th grade just finished
the book Wonderstruck. Each character from
Wonderstruck had created a box of Curiosity to help
tell their story. Mrs. Distler introduced, Joseph
Cornell, an artist that made artwork similar to what
was in the book to all Fifth graders. Students had
the opportunity to visit the New Orleans Museum of
Art and see Cornell's work. We were very impressed
and excited! Students were assigned an art project
where they had to create their own Box of Curiosity.
Students enjoyed viewing each other's artwork! In
Math class students are working their way through
multi-step word problems and fractions. Students
are using problem solving skills to conquer these
problems! 5th graders should continue to practice
close reading at home and any math facts that are
not memorized.
Sixth Grade/Seventh Grade - All of the middle
school teachers would like to thank all of the parents
who came to parent/teacher conferences last week.
We enjoyed meeting with each of you and discussing
your child's progress in our classes. Middle school
students have been extremely busy lately! All of the
students really enjoyed helping out during Fall Fest
and are anxiously looking forward to their special
Glow Party for Halloween. We started our
middle school clubs on October 17th and the
students really loved being a part of so many exciting
activities. Our clubs will be meeting again on
November 21st and all of the club leaders have some
very special events planned for our second meeting.
In Social Studies, sixth grade students are about
to embark on a journey to ancient Greece, where
stories of gods, monsters and the founding of
democracy will be taught. Our seventh graders are
studying the United States Constitution, and learning
the importance of being educated citizens. In English
Language Arts, sixth grade students are traveling
back in time to the year 1687 with Kit, the main
protagonist from The Witch of Blackbird Pond,
where they will experience what life was like
during Puritan times. Seventh grade students will
immerse themselves in forensic anthropology as
they read Written in Bone, and will participate in a
technology-rich research project to improve their
reading skills.
In middle school Math class, sixth grade students
will be working with tons of fractions. They will be
multiplying them, dividing them, and turning them
into decimals and percents. Seventh grade students
will be working with equations. They will be taking
real life situations and turning them into equations
that they can solve. In Science class, sixth grade
students compared and contrasted light and sound
waves. They used a tuning fork to hear different
frequencies, and Mrs. Barry made "music" by tracing
her finger over the edges of crystal glasses rimmed
with water. The tuning fork helped the students
hear different frequencies of sound. The students
also experimented with light waves, using mirrors to
reflect light and observing the effects of convex and
concave lenses on objects. We are wrapping up our
unit this week, learning about electromagnetic
waves. Seventh grade students are completing a unit
on plants. They dissected flowers, observed the
various parts and their functions. After watching a
video on traditional farming methods and reading
articles on sustainable farming, the class
discussed the pros and cons of each. As a group,
students chose one of the cons of sustainable
farming and developed an experiment to solve this
particular problem. We look forward to conducting
the experiments and whether or not the results
support our hypothesis!
P.E. News - The start of the new 9 weeks brings
about new activities. Our students have been
learning about basketball and the skills associated
with it – shooting, dribbling, passing, etc. We have
also been having a fun time with Lummi (or rhythm)
Sticks. With the older students, we have started to
play a modified version of Quidditch from the Harry
Potter books. The students have been doing a great
job with their running and fitness thus far, and we
hope to keep it going for the rest of the year.
Library - PARENTS AND GUARDIANS CAN NOW
ACCESS A/R PROGRESS FROM HOME
The software program used at Matas is called
Renaissance Place. This program has a special
feature called Renaissance Home Connect, which
you can access outside of school from any computer
with an Internet connection. Renaissance Home
Connect is fun and easy to use. It allows parents and
students to access their Accelerated Reader progress
from home. Second nine weeks points are due on
December 19th.
To log in to Renaissance Home Connect:
https://Hosted345.renlearn.com/206893/HomeCon
nect
Students will then be prompted for their Username
and Password The username is usually the first letter
of their first name and their full last name.
The password is usually the student’s initials.
Art Facilitor - Matas is proud to announce that our
submission, "Matas Children of the Corn" won 3rd
place in this year's Park-A-Boo Scarecrow contest
sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Kenner. We are
very proud to have participated in this event and
enjoyed creating and displaying this year's
submission!
Mrs. Larkin’s Class – MD Special Ed Hope we’re ready for the crispness of autumn. Our
Unique theme this month has the theme of weather.
We’ll listen to stories about how it changes all the
time, about a snow day that a turtle does not want
to take because he loves school, and what wind can
blow away. We’ll be listening for weather words,
like sunny, rainy, snowy, windy, cloudy, icy, and
foggy. We’ll be listening for letters, their sounds,
and some rhymes. We’ll be finding out the
difference between cold and snowy and hot and
sunny. We have already started creating some
autumn related crafts that will help decorate our
students’ homes. We are all thankful for all that we
have.
Ms. Hilliard - MD Special Ed - November, our
month for giving thanks, is finally here. Our class is
enjoying festive arts and crafts activities. The
activities include: making cornucopias, scarecrows,
Mr. Turkey's, pumpkin faces, etc. The Unique unit
target for the month is Earth and Space Science. The
unit topic is Water Water, Everywhere. In this unit
the students will get a basic understanding of the
water cycle.
34-
No school for students
(Professional Development for teachers)
Election Day (Holiday)
24-28 – Fall Break
The office will not accept forgotten homework,
books, lunch, etc. Only in cases of emergency will
personal messages be delivered to your child.
School Office: 733-6200