The Little Rattler

As we return from Thanksgiv-

ing Break, I can’t help but

think about all the things I am

thankful for at Tolar Elemen-

tary.

Tolar Elementary has the best

students I have ever been

around. This obviously is a

reflection of great parents.

Our students love coming to

school. They are polite and

respectful to our staff and to

each other.

I am also very thankful for the

amazing teachers we have at

this school. Teachers make all

the difference. Our teachers

work very hard to bring their

best each and every day.

Thank you for all the late

nights grading and planning.

I am also very thankful for this

community. This community

has given us a new school that

will be the new home for

these amazing Tolar students.

Thank you to all!

EXPLORE, DISCOVER, CREATE…

Teacher of the Week:

Shawna Green - 3rd Grade

Teacher

Your family: Jace, Keather -

19, Zade - 17, Bay Paul - 15,

Lucky and Tia

Your hobbies, talents or spe-

cial interests

Love to read mysteries and

watching my boys rope,

hanging out with my

daughter

What you like about our

school

Everything! Our spirit, our

care and love for the stu-

dents and parents and I get

to teach with my BFF! Love

our Morning Assemblies!

Meet the Teachers

Tolar Elementary News Week of Nov. 26th

2012

Volume 1, Issue 9

Pre-K News 2

Kindergarten News 2

1st grade News 2

2nd grade News 2

3rd grade News 3

4th grade News 3

5th grade News 3

PE News 4

Music News 4

Counselor’s Corner 5

Inside this issue:

Important Dates:

11-26-12 Picture Re-

takes

11-29-12 Terrific Kids

and Super Citizens

9:00

12-12-12 Elem UIL

12-20-12 Half day

12-21-12 Half day

and last day before

Christmas Break.

Great Thanksgiving Break!

My student of the week is Kaytlyn McMillen. Kaytlyn comes to

school everyday with a big smile, ready to learn. She is always a

good friends and is kind as well as fair to everyone. She tries her

hardest each and everyday. I am so happy to have Kaytlyn in my

class!

My student of the week is Royce Thedford. Royce is such a polite young man and

never has an unkind word for anyone. Royce is a hard worker and he knows how

important it is to get his work finished and turned in. Even when he doesn't feel

well, I never hear complaints....he just keeps going. Thank you Royce for being a

good example to your friends.

Love, Mrs. Rhodes

Any special memories you

have about being in ele-

mentary school

I remember laughing a lot,

the plys, mostly Kinder be-

cause our teachers opened

up our walls and team

taught, playing football

with the boys.

Support

Tolar Elementary

JOIN PTO!

We hope your family enjoyed

the Thanksgiving holiday. The

week before the break our

students created an impressive

Pilgrim Settlement and Indian

Village. They worked in teams

to construct an examples of

what life would have been like

for the early settlers. We will be

posting a video on our

webpages soon showing the

process our students took to

create the project.

This week we will begin study-

ing nocturnal animals. We will

gather facts, create graphs, and

build a venn diagram. Students

will also construct several noc-

turnal animal projects.

Please continue to send canned

food for our service project.

We plan to deliver the food to

the Tolar Food Pantry by the

middle of December. Thank

you for helping your child

learn the importance of show-

ing kindness to others.

how to subtract with regrouping using manipulatives and pictoral drawings. This week, we will begin our Counting Coins Unit. We will take an in-depth look at the symbols we use to represent the value of money. We will also learn about the different ways to write amounts of money and as well as a variety of ways of counting amounts of money. Parents, any time you can, please let your child practice counting money at home. Last week in 2nd grade social

We have had so much fun learn-ing about the first Thanksgiving and discussing things we are thankful for. As we return from break we will be reading about how a family reacts in a danger-ous situation. We will be enjoy-ing the story "Tara and Tiree, Fearless Friends." Through our story we will learn new vocabu-lary and look for cause and ef-fect. I can't wait to experience together what happens with "Tara and Tiree." Last week in math, we learned

studies we learned all about Thanksgiving and important events leading up to this great festival. This week we will be remembering heroes of the past. We will research the Navajo Code Talkers, WASP pilots of WWII, Paul Revere and John Hancock.

Kindergarten News

2nd grade News

spelling words so be sure to study at home. We will also be completing a liter-ature unit on If You Take a Mouse to the Movies. In math, we are moving along with subtraction and 3-digit addition, as well as reviewing past concepts. This week we

will begin learning about Christmas traditions and where they originated. It is going to be a busy and fun week in first grade!

1st grade News

Welcome Back!! We hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday! We really enjoyed the week leading up to it! Thank you for making our play so successful. We had so much fun and the kids did too! This week we will be working with new

Page 2 The L i t t le Ratt ler Volume 1, I ssue 9

Pre-K News

In Pre-K we will learn about

the power of making thought-

ful choices. We will learn

about safe choices, helpful

choices, smart choices, and

choices that reflect healthful

values. We will also learn that

choices have consequences.

Remember the JOY of Child-

hood!! Children laugh over 300

times a day whereas adults

laugh only 15 times. This is

because children laugh uncon-

ditionally while adults do so

only if there is a cause.

3rd grade News

5th grade News

4th grade News

3rd Grade Scientists had a great

time creating 'Trading Cards' for

the Forces of Nature we learned

about. We are delving into Natural

Resources now - how we can con-

serve, reuse & recycle them. Are

they Renewable, Nonrenewable or

Inexhaustible? This will follow

nicely after our look at Native

Americans & how they lived off of

Natural Resources.

Now that we have worked very

hard on our Multi. & Divi. facts,

we will look at finding Patterns in

Tables. These facts, along with

add't & sub't, will be a big part of

this. Practice facts everyday!!

This week in reading we will be

reading an expository text about

volcanoes. We will also get to

work with our new ipads! In gram-

mar we will learn about preposi-

tions. We have new spelling words

and our test will be December 6th.

In social studies we will compare

and contrast our community with

that of the pioneers.

If you are a UIL speller please

study your list!!! Storytellers prac-

tice retelling the stories with DE-

TAILS & ENTHUSIASM!!!

Thanksgiving Holiday!

Fourth Grade had a very busy

week before letting out on Friday.

On Monday we helped the Veter-

ans pick up flags from the graves

of the Fallen Soldiers. This has

always been a great experience for

us in the past. We were very excit-

ed to go and be able to have a

small part of this wonderful time

to be thankful and to pay our

respect for all of the brave men

and women who have given their

lives to protect and serve our

country. May we always remember

their sacrifice! It also gives us a

chance to teach our students how

important it is to pay it forward

and to help our community.

We also had a long week of

STAAR Benchmark Testing.

The week of Nov. 12th was CRA-

ZY! Fourth Grade had 3

"benchmark" test (Math, Reading,

and Writing). Whew!!! We went to

a wonderful pep rally followed by

a great Thanksgiving meal. It was a

very abnormal week for us. We are

ready to buckle down and take

care of business these next few

weeks. Come on UIL!!!

We hope that everyone had a great

reading, and science! We

can't wait to see what every-

one brings!

We are still studying energy

and how it can change from

one kind to another. The

kids have been giving lots of

examples in the real world.

One example was this: A

radio changes from electri-

cal energy to sound energy.

We will also kick off a pro-

Last week in 5th grade we

completed our benchmarks

for Math, Reading, and Sci-

ence.

In Math we were introduced

to FRACTIONS. We fo-

cused on creating equivalent

fractions. We have asked

that every student bring in

their family's favorite recipe

the Monday after the

Thanksgiving break. We will

be using the recipes in math,

ject that involves holiday

traditions around the world.

Students will form collabo-

rative groups, research cus-

toms in countries other than

our own, create a traditional

dish to share with their

classmates, create a presen-

tation of their findings and a

game, and connect with a

student from the country

that they are studying via

ePals.

Page 3 The L i t t le Ratt ler Volume 1, I ssue 9

We are working on basketball handling skills that are incorpo-rated into our games this week. Rattlers in Progress notes went home today in Mon-

day folders for stu-dents who want to perform. For more info, please email Mrs. Ives @: iveslisa@tolarisd.org Tolar Elementary

helped break and set a new world record by joining other schools on the STACK IT UP DAY, just before our break. We had great fun!

PE news

in a game show format.

There are PRIZES!!! Woo

Hoo! "UIL students ---

Come on down!!!!"

Music Theory this week

will cover pitch, focusing

on melody. The material

used for this lesson will

be (what do you

think????...) That's right -

CHRISTMAS MUSIC!!! I

just love Christmas mu-

sic!!!!

Trivia Question: Which

Christmas song starts

with 6 repeated notes in

the melody?

Music news

Music classes have

worked hard preparing,

performing and partici-

pating in five different

events so far this fall!

Whew have we been

busy! We aren't done yet!

We are all in full swing of

the Merry Thanksgivow-

een Season and the best is

yet to come!

First of all, UIL students

are participating in a

Game Show this Friday at

1:20. The UIL students

will answer questions re-

lating to their UIL event

Page 4 The L i t t le Ratt ler Volume 1, I ssue 9

Tolar Elementary

401 E. 7th Street

PO Box 368

Tolar, TX, 76476

Tolar Elementary website

www.tolarisd.org/Page/116

you can be involved in

are: basketball games, the

jr high girls & boys as

well as the high school

girls & boys would love

for you to come out and

watch them play; uil com-

petition is just around the

corner; as well as each

grade level is participating

in their own service pro-

jects. There are plenty of

things to keep us busy

these next few weeks

while we wait for santa!

If you are like me, I

would really like for the

weather to cooperate and

Welcome back everyone!

I hope you all had a great

thanksgiving holiday and

you are ready to come

back and work hard.

These next few weeks will

be fun, but we must re-

member that we are here

to learn. It is important

too that you are here eve-

ry day, because if you are

not here, you can’t learn

and we would miss you

too!!

A few things that are

happening during the

month of December that

at least “feel” like it is De-

cember!!

So, be here every day,

come prepared to work

hard and get involved

with what is going on

here at tolar! Hope you

have a good week! Make

good choices everyone!

Counselor’s Corner

Phone: 254-835-4028

Fax: 254-835-4319

E-mail: pryan@tolarisd.org

Tolar Elementary

EXPLORE, DISCOVER, CREATE