Dear Parents,
Thank you for supporting the UST Student Councils 4Ocean appeal by buying our limited edition ‘Freedom’ T-shirts at the carnival and helping the Student Council raise money for cleaning the plastic pollution 1 pound at a time. As you know, the goal of the Student Council is to raise enough money to clean 150 pounds of trash from the oceans, an equivalent of the number of students and teachers at UST! It has been a great initiative to get our students involved with the global movement of stopping and removing trash from the world's ocean and coastlines! Student Council has already raised some money but we need a one last push to make this goal. And for that, we need your help.
Raising money for 4Ocean is only one of many great things our students are doing this term. K classes and G1 students are learning about animals and what we can do to preserve their habitats; upper elementary students are working on their individual environmental research projects for the Science Fair; all students will be exhibiting their environmental-inspired work at the Art Fair and the entire school will come together as one for our original Save the Oceans play in June.
Student Council has decided that all students should be wearing the 4Ocean bracelets at the concert as part of their costumes.
Here is a short video to help you learn more about this great charity.
Here is how you can get the 4Ocean bracelet for your child (and for yourself if you would like join your children in supporting this great charity):
1. Get a ‘Freedom’ T-shirt (if you don’t have one yet)
We have a special offer to help sell the rest of the T-shirts.
Buy an adult T-shirt and 4Ocean bracelet for ¥2,300 or
Buy a childrens t-shirt and 4Ocean bracelet for ¥1,800.
Available sizes are limited. You can find sizes on the Google form.
2. Buy just the 4Ocean bracelet
Alternatively if you would like to just purchase a bracelet, there is an option on the form to do so. The retail price of the bracelets is 2,200 yen, however we have partnered with 4Ocean to reduce the individual cost of the bracelets for the UST community! It has been made possible for us to sell them for ¥1,100 to children and ¥1,300 to parents. Since the students have already been raising money for the bracelets, we are pricing kids bracelets slightly lower than grown-up ones.
The more bracelets we sell, the more pounds of trash UST helps remove from the world's oceans and coastlines!
3. Claim your bracelet with an extra donation of 300 yen (kids) or 500 yen (parents)
If your family had already purchased Freedom t-shirts, you can receive your 4Ocean bracelet for a small extra donation of 300 yen (per child) and 500 yen (per grown-up). Please send the money to school with your child and indicate on the sign-up sheet that you already have the T-shirt so we can organize for you to receive your bracelet.
If you have purchased multiple T-shirts for the your family, you can claim multiple bracelets too, just send 300 yen (or 500 yen) x the number of Ts you have bought.
We can’t wait to see students, teachers and parents wearing their bracelets at the end of year concert. What a great addition to the costumes in a concert that is all about taking care of our world's oceans! We are so excited to share what we have learned with you!
All orders are due by this Monday, May 21st.
Thank you again for your support!
UST PTA and UST Student Council
This week we went to the Sony ExploraScience Museum to learn about sound and light. We spent some time at the park for recess and lunch. The students enjoyed finding crabs and playing at the beach! At the museum, students explored volume, pitch, shadows, and more!
Nonfiction Readers
Students are working with Reading Club groups to study animal topics. This week students reviewed how to use a glossary and a dictionary to look up the meaning of new science words in their nonfiction books. They also learned that nonfiction readers think about their books in parts.
The whole book is about ___________. This section is about ____________.
Students completed Main Idea and Key Detail graphic organizers to learn this skill. They picked one part of the book and figured out the main idea of that part. To prove what the section was about, they looked for details, or bits of information, that told more about the main idea of the section. They practiced writing 3 details that told more about the main idea.
Examples:
The whole book is about bears. This section is about cubs.
Detail from the section: Cubs drink milk from their mothers.
The whole book is about frogs. This section is about the sounds frogs make.
Detail from the section: Some frogs in Texas bark like a dog.
Persuasive Writing
Our class started a new writing piece this week. Students learned that persuasive writing is when you tell your opinion and try to convince others to agree with you. For this piece of writing, students chose a school rule they think is the most important and brainstormed three reasons why students should follow that rule.
Example:
We should walk in the hall.
Reason 1: to be quiet
Reason 2: to see where we are going
Reason 3: to stay safe
Writing Vocabulary
Opinion: an opinion tells how you feel about something
Addition and Subtraction to 40
This week students practiced how to add three 1-digit numbers to find a total. Students used the strategy "make 10" and explored different methods they could use to solve equations. We also began solving story problems using addition and subtraction to 40.
Examples:
Changing Pitch
This week we reviewed what we learned about volume and investigated changing pitch. Students observed the pitch of a one-string guitar and xylophone to change the pitch of a sound. We talked about the relationship between length and pitch. We also learned that large objects tend to vibrate slower than small objects and high-pitched sounds come from objects that vibrate rapidly.
Science Vocabulary
Volume: how loud or soft a sound is
Pitch: how high or low a sound is
Have a good weekend!
- Ms. Allison