PINNACLE

PREP SCHOOL NEWSPAPER

September 3, 2019

1, 2019

Hello, September!

Happy September Pinnacle Prep School! The first few weeks have been wonderful. Our students are now back in the rhythm of learning. We are looking forward to a fantastic school year.

*Please make sure to look at our calendar for events this month.

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Mrs. Kennedy Giraffes & Pandas

We’re off to a great start in Mrs. Kennedy’s classes. Our morning class explores the calendar, alphabet and its sounds, weather, and shapes. The students are quickly learning and remembering both old and new songs. All of our songs involve body movement to practice balance, coordination, and crossing our midlines. Each day we share news, read a story or two, and have play time to boost imaginations, relationships, and manners.

My second class is starting to explore motor skills, numbers, phonics, sight words, and the joy of reading. As the next month unfolds, I will be determining each child’s skillset and setting individual or small groups as well as individual work for specific center times. Please read to your child every night. Ask them open ended questions and have them answer in complete sentences. Finally, it’s perfectly appropriate to correct pronunciation of words, verb tense, or sentence structure. They say, “Me want samwich.” Have them repeat, “May I please have a sandwich?”

Mrs. Laura’s Brilliant Stars Giraffes & Pandas

Our classes have been exploring all different forms of communication: reading, art, listening to stories, and writing to understand our friends and to enjoy our world. During our reading time, we have read stories about never giving up. We read The Itsy-Bitsy Spider and talked about how the spider went up the water spout and never gave up. Another story we read was about how working with a friend on a new thing makes the experience so much better. We are enjoying the Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel. We will continue to read more stories this month to reinforce that, all things come together with time and work. We will continue to work on sounding out during reading and continue using our tools to decode our phonics. On our technology days, we have learned that we can look up information to understand a concept. We learned that apples give us fiber, nutrients, and hydration to replenish our bodies and build them up.

On craft days we will let our imaginations soar and work on coming up with an idea. For instance, when we learned about community helpers, we all made an example using something in the classroom to represent what that would look like. We learned about engineers, zookeepers, doctors, veterinarians, firefighters, and police officers. The students were so creative and used construction paper, puzzle pieces, and blocks to show what community workers do to help make our lives easier. On our Fun Day Fridays we work on fun hands-on activities to reinforce all the ideas and learning throughout the week. We do this to work on our memory. It helps them connect what they have learned and gain confidence using new tools. I’m looking forward to all the light bulb moments as we continue to strive in working toward understanding. Thank you, Mrs. Laura

Lower English

Ms. Jessica

We are off to a great start this year at Pinnacle Prep School!

Welcome back parents and students! I hope you had a fun and relaxing summer. We have started the year with “All About Me” and “Community Helpers.” The students have enjoyed learning more about each other and making new friends. We also learned about apples and did several activities including: apple observations, apple fractions, sorting, and an apple mobile. The month of September will consist of a large social studies unit focusing on continents, our country, Texas, cowboys and Native Americans. We will be doing many activities including research, creating state brochures, map skills, writing with symbols and Cowboy Dress Up Day.

In addition to our themes, we also cover all of the basic language arts concepts. We are reviewing syllables, suffixes, adjectives, and pronouns. Students have a spelling list every week with tests on Fridays. We also read short stories, define vocabulary using a glossary or dictionary, and write journal responses. We are currently reading realistic fiction and discussing various genres. Wolves will be starting a novel study in the next couple of weeks. Our first book is The Sign of the Beaver; books will be provided by the school. All classes participate in class discussions and various activities related to the text.

Students also write one or more essays a

week. We go through the writing process starting with pre-writing and brainstorming. Each student receives one on one conferencing to edit and revise their work. During this time, I check for grammar, spelling, capitalization and proper sentence structure. We have just finished learning about people who help us in our community, such as firefighters and teachers! So, their writing assignment was about community helpers and why they are important. Future writing assignments include: designing a floor plan and writing a descriptive essay, personification, “I’m Proud to be an American,” and state research.

Please be reading at home with your child every night. You can have students write a short summary or write about their favorite part after reading to assist with reading comprehension. I have sent home a current, master spelling list. Please study these words at home with your child. They can write them, spell them out loud or use them in a sentence. Even writing them in pen or marker makes it fun for the kids. These are words that they should have memorized and be able to spell correctly in their writing.

Lower Math

Ms. Jaya

It is great to welcome back everyone after a wonderful summer break. I am glad to get to know each one of my wonderful students. They are all amazing and hard workers.

We started the school year by revising skills that we learnt last year. Pandas learned completing 100’s number chart and are learning place value. They used number blocks to identify their ones and tens place for a given number. We will continue to review our addition skills using flash cards and then move on to subtracting numbers. We will start learning to count money using the dollar bills and coins and continue to review our math addition, subtraction facts and then start multiplication tables.

Zebras are learning place value of numbers (up to hundred thousand place), writing numbers in standard, expanded and word form along with comparison and ordering of numbers. They are also learning about counting and estimating money. We will continue to review money, adding money, compare and order money. We will also learn number line, adding and estimating larger numbers. We will continue to practice our multiplication tables and slowly move on to division.

Wolves have also reviewed place value concepts (up to hundred millions place), estimating, rounding, adding and subtracting money. We are working with independent problem solving. They are now learning to identify different properties of addition and solving them using the required concepts. We will continue to practice our multiplication and division concepts.

Upper Math Ms. Anu

Fourth Graders will be working on two and three-digit multiplication with two and three-digit numbers. We will be starting with the concept of greatest common factor and least common multiples which will be used in learning adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators.

Fifth Graders will be reviewing adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators. We will be reviewing multiplying and dividing fractions. Students will be reviewing mathematical operations on mixed numbers.

Sixth Graders will be reviewing the concept of decimals by starting with the addition and subtraction of decimals. Students will be introduced to the concept of dividing decimals with both divisor and dividend being a decimal.

Seventh Graders will be working on Pre-Algebra. Students will be working on solving complex multistep equations. We will also be working on solving complex multistep inequalities. Kids will be practicing mathematical operations on fractions when variables are involved.

Upper English

Mr. Troxel

Welcome back for another exciting year. I’m thrilled to join the amazing team at Pinnacle Prep. Let me start by sharing a bit about my background and core educational philosophy. I spent 28 years in Texas education both in the classroom and as a school Principal prior to joining Pinnacle. I’m here to teach humans, not a subject. In all I seek to help every learner discover their power and develop excellence to succeed in any role life places before them. Ask your child to share our core class values (the 6 BE’s) and you’ll understand my beliefs concerning success. I look forward to learning how your child thinks, determining which skills require perfecting, and working beside them in creating tools to thrive in any endeavor. Allow me to share some of my key practices for all classes.

• We are using Interactive Student Notebooks (ISN’s) as a method of recording and organizing key concepts. They take the form of reflective written journals as well as important notes for content. Occasionally I will have students bring their ISN’s home for you to review. Ask them questions about what you read there. As parents you are your children’s first and most important teachers. I am an extension of your desire for learning, so it’s critical that we understand the learning goals and activities in place at school for your child. • We will write every day and will be learning to analyze our own work product critically. This will be accomplished through peer writing workshops, class discussions, and a tactic called Socratic Seminar. We will be learning and perfecting these as the year progresses, but the core principle for all is reflective self-analysis as vital for quality work. • We will practice grammar both in class interactively and by utilizing the IXL Learning online system for diagnosing/practicing specific needs according to each learner.

• We will utilize the Sadlier-Oxford Workshop textbook to increase working vocabulary with a combination of in class and homework activities throughout each week. • We will read classic and contemporary literature in the form of novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and nonfictional prose. Students will analyze and respond to each in writing, public speaking, debate, and theatrical performance.

As year progresses, we will incorporate social, government, economic, and historical studies into our curriculum. I use the classic term Humanities to describe the curricular focus in toto, because history, literature, and art all interplay to give meaning to our experiences. The Tigers will be starting the novel Hoot this week by Carl Hiaassen. The book explores the nature of friendship, business needs versus our environment, and how to be true to your values when there are inevitable conflicts. The Black Panthers are reading Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. His classic novella explores life for people struggling to survive each day during the Great Depression in rural California. I look forward to discovering these and a variety of other topics with your child as we grow together throughout the new year As a quick final note, I ask for your patience as I get to know your child’s strengths, teach my basic routines and expectations, and create the best learning environment to meet their needs. Great structures start with solid foundations for which time is essential to construct. Thank you in advance for your support, and thanks for sharing your amazing child with us here at Pinnacle Prep school.

Science Lab News

Mrs. Hozie

Welcome back to the Science Lab! For these first four weeks, we are reviewing and studying matter and its properties. Students are measuring and comparing the physical properties of matter. Wolves and Tigers went over the two main ways we measure volume. As we examine solids, liquids, and gases, we will perform experiments looking at the similarities and differences between them. We will experiment on how matter can change through heating and cooling. Also, our Black Panthers are taking on the challenge of making an International Space Station model. Stay tuned for photos. We will be using Kahoot.com to go over the material in class, and I may assign some reviews for homework. Kahoot! can be downloaded as an app on phones and tablets (android and Apple). All have free versions.

Questions to ask your student for review: Can you explain to me the difference between mass and weight? What are two ways you can find the volume of an object? Which of the states of matter has a definite volume but no definite shape? How is a salad a good example of a mixture?

Science in the News Excerpt from Science News for Students:

Is ocean acidification knocking the scents out of salmon?

Salmon’s ability to sniff out danger seems to nosedive as seawater becomes more acidic. That’s the finding of a new study. It assessed the fear response of salmon at different levels of pH. That’s the scale that ranks how acidic or alkaline something is.

Human activities have been adding more and more carbon dioxide, or CO2, to the atmosphere. This has been causing global warming. But not all of the CO2 emitted stays in the air. The world’s oceans absorb some of it. That, in turn, has been lowering the water’s pH, a process known as acidification (Ah-SID-ih-fih-KAY-shun).

Chase Williams is a toxicologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Such scientists study how chemicals and other things might cause harm. “Salmon rely heavily on their sense of smell for survival and successful reproduction. So it was important to investigate how low-pH water might impact their sense of smell,” he explains.

Williams and his team tested coho salmon in the lab living in water with different pH levels. And the more acidic the water, the less the fish fled the smell of danger, the researchers now report. They shared their findings December 18, 2018 in Global Change Biology.

“The smell of salmon skin should set up major alarms in a salmon’s brain. It warns them that their school mate is being eaten,” Williams says. “You can imagine that’s very powerful in the wild.” Normally, one whiff of salmon skin will send other fish scurrying for safer waters.

Salmon depend on smell for more than evading predators. Like most salmon species, coho are anadromous. That means that they hatch and grow in freshwater rivers, then migrate to the sea as they mature. At the end of their lives, the salmon return to the streams of their birth. They fight their way there to spawn — then die.

Smell is critical for these fish finding their way back to “home” streams to reproduce. It’s also crucial for identifying other coho, including potential mates.

The results of the new study don’t bode well for these fish, Williams says. Already, he notes, these fish and their ecosystems face a host of other pressures. Dams on some rivers, for instance, make it difficult for coho to return to spawn in their home streams. And even should they make it upstream to spawn, dams might kill young coho as they tried to migrate downstream to the sea. Polluted storm water flowing into Puget Sound is also proving toxic to these fish.

And what’s bad news for salmon is probably bad news for other marine species, too. In fact, says Helfield, the study’s findings are not unexpected. “Other recent studies,” he notes, “have shown that some marine fish become ‘drunk and disoriented’ when exposed to too much carbon dioxide in sea water.”

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