Dear Families,

Here we are in the middle of the second  quarter!  We are working hard to become honor students and displaying positive character - making good choices daily.  We are gearing up for a very interesting month of all kinds of December activities.

We had been studying and making connections between the skeletal and muscular systems.  Seeing how the one truly needs the other to be able to function.  As we now have moved onto Luna, our moon, our emormous sun and the shining stars, we continue to make connections how one builds onto another.  Mrs. Wilson and Ms. Ellis at Horizons Unlimited had some super hands on activities for us.  Mrs. Wilson helped us realize that poor Pluto is not really in a category by himself. He now is considered a sub-planet with several other buddies. Ms. Ellis had us take our seed habitat capsule back with us to Shive.  We look forward to emailing her our findings! 

We have been reading and writing with our buddies in Mrs. Ingold's fourth grade class. We have buddied up with our older friends to do some sequencing of events and learning strategies and techniques to make our writing more powerful and dynamic! Lately they have helped us edit and have encouraged us to work on our surprise endings.  This has helped both our classes to work on becoming more cooperative team members. Listening to one another encourages the students to become stronger learners.                                        

We continue to work hard to be good role models for Shive's younger students. We have realized that moving from the primary grades to upper grades has us growing towards to becoming independent people. It has been wonderful to see how responsible we have become. Gaining pride daily.  Respecting each other is high on our priority list.  Working with each other in small groups has enabled us to grow in our academic strengthes and has encouraged us to keep "chugging" through our weaknesses.  We have become more patient and tolerant of our individual differences.

We have been working with other teachers on special projects. Mrs. Pam Drye, our media coordinator, Mrs. April Spry, our curriculum coach, have taught us itech lessons.  They have guided us towards making ichat presentations. These projects have helped our increasing awareness of the necessary technology skills. We are moving forward to becoming life long learners.   Both of them engaged us into learning about some published authors.  We even wrote Mr. Lester Laminack questions which he answered on our broadcast when he was here at Shive Elementary!  It was a very neat opportunity.  We can't wait to meet Mr. Steven Layne when we visit Faith Elementary!

We have been working on understanding and knowing our multiplication facts. Zeros, ones, twos, fives, tens facts have been our first challenge and now we are tackling the eleven tables.  The rest will be our next challenge.  We are working towards achieving a multiplication license. It will show that we mastered facts through 12 tables. Please help us by creating multiplication flashcards and practicing them with your child. Please work on your child's weaker areas. It is a necessary building process.

We have been blessed. We have a great deal to be thankful for... the attitudes at Shive are contagious! Thank you families for all the support you've given us. Come join us in fellowship! We look forward to celebrating the traditions of the winter holidays.  Come share some of yours with us.  As time nears, be looking for information of how we plan to enjoy activities during this season.  Perhaps you'd like to help.  We would love to have you!  We will start off by studying Christmas around the world.  We are eager to learn new customs.  Thank you from all of us for helping us build an even stronger school. You may consider purchasing a 2008-2009 Ethan H. Shive Elementary School yearbook to save all the memories.

Keep reading at least 4 evenings a week and recording in your logs. A quick thank you to Ms. Bloom and Mrs. Drye for encouraging us to read more on our breaks by raising our book borrowing limits.  We now have literature discussions to recommend books we've read.  Continue to work with flashcards for high frequency words.

Much happiness,
G. Myers

"We think we can.  We know we'll try.  Then, we will succeed!"