Congratulations Students, Faculty, and Staff of Walter G. Schneckenburger Elementary School

December Dates to Remember Dec. 7 – Dawn Buster’s Kiwanis Rewards for Reading Event (Grades 3-5) Dec. 8 – Pre-K Audubon Zoo Field Trip Dec. 11 – Pelicans STEM/Literacy Rally (Grades 3-5) @ Pelicans Training Facility Dec. 11 through 14 – Holiday Shop Dec. 13 – Raising Cane’s Night Dec. 14 – Second Grade Service Learning Field Experience @ Causeway Head Start Dec. 15 – Schneckette Performance @ Kenner City Park (6:30 PM) Dec. 16 – Schneckette Performance @ Lafreniere Park (6:00 PM) Dec. 18 – First Grade Mystery Reader Dec. 19 – School Pajama Day Dec. 20 – Holiday Program (9:00 AM) Half Day/NO AFTERSCHOOL CHILDCARE

4 6 % O F O U R S T U D E N T S S C O R E D M A S T ER Y & A B O V E O N T H E L E A P

H O W D I D O U R S C H O O L P E R F O R M C O M P A R E D T O T H E S C H O O L S Y S T E M & S T A T E ? Louisiana State Average 31% Jefferson Parish School System Average 29% Walter Schneckenburger Elementary School 46%

January Dates to Remember Jan. 4 – Students return to school Jan. 8 – Report Cards issued Jan. 15 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day (No School) Jan. 18 – Class Pictures Jan. 22 – Testing Meeting (Grades 3-5) Jan. 23 – DARE Program (9:00 AM) Jan. 24 – Early Release Day (1:00 PM)

Jeans for Autism By: Hunter Bushnell, 5th Grader

The fifth grade students had the privilege of interviewing Abigail, “Abby,” Johnson, Teen Miss Bayou Voice for Autism. Abby is a former Schneckenburger student. Abby stated, “My time spent at Schneckenburger was the best years of my life.” When asked how she gained an interest in helping children with special needs, she shared that during every P.E. and recess period, she would go to Mrs. Vicki’s room instead. She preferred to assist children with special needs during these times. Abby knew from her experiences helping Mrs. Vicki, she wanted to be a “voice” for children with special needs. Abby now aspires to be a river boat pilot. Her father and grandfather encouraged her down this path. After spending a day career shadowing a River Boat Pilot, she knew it was the right choice for her. Our school wanted to help Abby raise money for the non-profit group that she now works with, so we had a fundraiser. After a successful dress down day, we were able to raise $130 dollars for Bayou Voice for Autism. Our fifth grade class also plans to donate additional funds from our current narrative book project.

First Grade News December is here and at the end of the month we will have reached the end of the 2nd nine weeks. This is the last month that we will be reading the all the tests aloud on test day. Special care will be taken to use words that the students have been given the skills to read. They should have mastered all the kindergarten sight words, short vowel words, long vowel patterns with a “bossy” e, oo, and ou. The testing

words like who, what, where, why, how were introduced. We will still read aloud the math assessments. This can be difficult for some students who rush through the tests so please remind your child to read carefully and raise their hand if they have questions. This month, we will learn more decoding skills for reading such as vowel patterns oi, oy and au, aw. We will continue to practice the writing process – brainstorming, draft, revise and edit, publish. They are really understanding the process and their ability write complete sentences has greatly improved. In Math, we will work on subtracting a single-digit numbers from a double-digit numbers. Before the winter break we will have our Grinch Day, this is one of the student’s favorite days of the year.

If you can volunteer to assist on the 19th in the morning, please let your child’s teacher know. The winter

performance is on the 20th which is a half day.

Kindergarten News Hello family and friends! We want to send a sincere THANK YOU to all the family members who helped us for our Thanksgiving Fest! Everything ran smoothly and most importantly, the children had a blast! We could NOT have done this successfully, without your support! December will be a very busy, but exciting month for our kindergarteners. We begin December with a unit on The Gingerbread Man. We will read various versions of this story and compare and contrast the characters, settings and other literary details. We will end this unit by making yummy gingerbread houses! Our learning will take us around the world, as we explore the different traditions some countries have to celebrate Christmas. We will also learn about other holidays celebrated in December like Hanukah and Kwanzaa. Students will do fun activities and receive special treats! Finally, we will end this month, reading and doing

exciting activities with The Polar Express! In Reading, students are still working on handwriting, letter sounds and blending sounds in CVC words. Please continue to help your child review their sight words and to blend words daily. In Math, students will be practicing counting to 100, skip-counting by 2’s and 10’s and finding patterns on a hundreds chart. We hope you have a joyful and safe Winter Break and we wish a Happy New Year filled with many blessings!

PBIS Superhero SPOTLIGHT

Mrs. Fisse is a sweet teacher who helps

me learn new things. – Rania Benslimane

Ms. Vonda Simmons: 2018-2019 Teacher of the Year By: Aaliyah Green, 5th Grader

Ms. Vonda, a special education teacher here at Schneckenburger Elementary, recently won the Teacher of the Year award for the 2018-2019 school year. She received the honor for helping students with special needs. Ms. Vonda exclaimed, “I’m so honored to be teacher of the year. All the staff members welcomed me and they said that it’s my year.” Ms. Vonda also stated that she loves to help and teach her students so much. She also recalled her best teaching moment when a non-verbal student in her class stood up for herself and spoke. “I was standing there and crying,” Ms. Vonda said softly as tears begin to fill her eyes. Ms. Vonda is honored to be chosen as Teacher of the Year and thanks everyone who voted for her.

Second Grade News Here’s a look at what we’re up to for December. In math,

students will complete their final unit on 2-digit computation. Students will be learning how to regroup in

addition and decompose in subtraction. Both of these computation skills are key components to 2nd grade math success. In reading, we are continuing our unit about “A Drop Around the World.” Students will continue to read various literature about United States and its geography. This unit also ties in with social studies. Our grammar

unit on verbs will also continue. Students will finish the unit on verbs. We will then review sentence structure and focus on subjects. We have been discussing service learning

in library, and we will experience it first-hand with a field trip to Causeway Head Start. This field trip is

currently planned for December 14. Please continue to read nightly and practice math facts daily. We hope you all

have a safe and fun Winter Break later this month!

Ms. Laurie was recently honored as the 2018-2019 Support Staff Member of the Year at

Schneckenburger Elementary. She has been working at Schneckenburger for four years. She

worked with Pre-K at a different school, but now works here with Kindergarten kids that have

autism, down syndrome, and other special needs. Ms. Laurie said passionately, “I love working with

the kids that have disabilities, because I get to teach them the things they need to know to

succeed.” Her favorite part of working with her students is when they struggle, but then get it. Ms. Laurie has earned this honor for doing all of the

hard work that she has does.

Ms. Laurie Price 2018-2019 Support Staff Member of the Year

By: Giada Mejia, 5th Grader

Third Grade News Third grade can't believe we are almost half way through this school year! In math, we have been working with understanding the meaning of multiplication and have many strategies that we can use to find our answers. Now we are going to work on memorizing all of our facts! We will also be working on finding the area of regions which ties in with all of our multiplication work. The students are busy reading both fiction and nonfiction material. They are getting better at locating evidence and writing answers with complete sentences. Please continue to check that homework assignments are completed neatly and correctly. Thanks for all you do to help your child succeed in school. We hope everyone enjoys their nice holiday break. See you next year!

CONTACT INFORMATION Christi Rome, Principal Karen Bucher, Exec. Dir. Of Principal Performance Issac Joseph, Superintendent Sandy Denapolis-Bosarge, District 9 School Board Email us at: schneckenburger@jppss.k12.la.us Follow the Jefferson Parish Public School System: https://twitter.com/JPPSS https://facebook.com/Jeffparishschools

Welcome back! We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Winter break will be here before we know it, but we've got lots of work to do before that comes. Math has our students continuing to work with fractions. Before our break, they will have learned how to do all operations with fractions. We will begin to simplify each of these problems after our break. We are beginning a new unit in science where the students will explore the flow of energy in living things starting with plants and photosynthesis. In ELA, the students are continuing with their novel The Birchbark House. Students will be completing activities involving literary analysis and theme. We are also happy to say that the students are wrapping up their very successful book sale of short stories. The students had so much fun completing this activity and they truly got to see that hard work pays off!

CONTACT INFORMATION Christi Rome, Principal Karen Bucher, Exec. Dir. Of Principal Performance Issac Joseph, Superintendent Sandy Denapolis-Bosarge, District 9 School Board Email us at: schneckenburger@jppss.k12.la.us Follow the Jefferson Parish Public School System: https://twitter.com/JPPSS https://facebook.com/Jeffparishschools

4th Grade would like to wish everyone a very Happy Holidays! We can’t believe this school year is already about half way over. In ELA the students will be completing their novel study of Percy Jackson and beginning poetry and figurative language. In math we will continue to master our division skills, as well as review multiplication and word problem attack strategies. In social studies we will complete our five regions unit and begin our unit on economics. We will continue to explore Earth’s surface in science. Please continue to review all study guides, check test dates and planners daily. Thanks for your continued support!