Specialists Newsletter

By Specialists Team
Specialists
January 05, 2024

What are we learning?

PE

  • K through 3 grades are participating in fitness activities and learning about the skeletal system, muscular system, and nutrition.
  • 4th through 6 grade are participating in fitness activities learning about the skeletal system, and nutrition, and completing their mid-year fitness assessments.

Music

  •  K-1 students are learning about the Nutcracker Ballet and the composer, Peter Tchaikovsky.
  • Second-grade students are learning about Franz Joseph Haydn’s Surprise Symphony.
  • Fourth-Grade students are studying composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
  • Fifth-grade students are learning about Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite.
  • Sixth-graders are studying Johann Pachelbel and his Canon in D.
  • Selected sixth-grade students are preparing for the Fairfax County All-County Chorus Festival in April. 
  • Fifth- and sixth-grade students are using classroom percussion and Orff instruments to create musical accompaniments to a short clip from the movie Peter & the Wolf.

STEAM

  • 6th grade students are researching the importance of air and indoor air quality on human health and well-being.  
  • 4th and 5th grade students are studying Weather and Climate and experimenting with temperature inversions and currents. 
  • 3rd grade is experimenting with surface tension as part of the Water Cycle unit.  They will be able to understand that environmental engineers clean water and air pollution to take advantage of surface tension. They will be able to understand that environmental engineers clean water and air pollution to take advantage of surface tension.
  • 2nd grade is continuing to explore regular and irregular polygons and will soon be creating a polygon using 3D printing. 
  • 1st grade students are learning to give precise directions and creating (and writing) algorithms to complete a variety of tasks. 
  • K students are building a model of a computer and explaining why they believe something is a computer.  

Library

  • Fairfax County Public Library is having a Winter Reading Adventure.  Students can read and log books/minutes to gain prizes!!    Here’s a link for the printout OR you can log online OR have your child ask Mrs. Ames in the library for a copy!  
  • Happy Reading!!  SNOW many good books….