KIPP NYC

Special points of interest:

Grow Your Dreams!
Volume 1, Issue 1 October 1, 2009

Dates to remember
Thursday, November 5,
2009 End of first quarter.
Friday, November 6, 2009
KIPP NYC DAY: School
Closed for Kids: Teachers
Report.
Thursday, November 12,
2009 Parent Teacher Con-
ferences.
Saturday, November 14,
2009: Saturday School : All
families must attend. Addi-
tional family members are
welcome.
Tuesday, November 17,
2009 KIPP NYC Half Day.
12:00mpm dismissal
Friday, November 20, 2009
KIPP AES Family Feast!
2:00-4:00 pm
Monday ,November 23,
2009 to Friday November
27, 2009 Thanksgiving
Break! NO SCHOOL!
Inside this issue:
Principals Message KIPP NYC
some more community bonding Volume 1 Issue 2
and fun. We look forward to
November 2, 2009
shooting baskets, practicing
our yoga breathing, designing
new foods in cooking, and discovering new pieces of nature to
make art projects. We look forward to seeing every one of our
families at our next Saturday School. We also want to thank
the parents that came out to our first coffee and conversa-
tions. We truly grow as a community when we get together to
share great ideas. So many wonderful things came out of that
chat: the connections between families, applications for library
cards to the public library and a search for good afterschool
programs for next year. We hope to see many more parents at
coffee and conversation on December 4th. Have a wonderful
month and as always keep reading with your child every night.
Dear Families, Love, Carolyn and Steve
This fall has brought us many wonderful mo-
ments. The Class of 2026 is implementing their school rules of
Be Nice and Work Hard with less and less reminders. They
are sprouting each other out for being good teammates. The
children are also starting to internalize our chant that this is
OUR school and OUR place. It is a wonderful thing to watch
children see a child by themselves during recess and offer to
play with them, or to watch another child take a risk by writing
the morning message for the class. The class of 2026 is truly
beginning to grow their dreams. Throughout the day students
are learning, overcoming challenges, smiling and laughing. It’s
a beautiful thing.
Our school community, however, isn’t just our
students; it is our families too. We are looking forward to our
school community getting together again on November 14th for

Principals Message
Around The School
In Our Classrooms
Sprout Outs!
Price Point! A message
from Ms. Price
Be Nice! Work Hard!
Teacher Message of the
Month!
1
1
Around The School
2
Repeating The Call !
2 Around KIPP AES we’ve been Being Nice and Working Hard,
as well as growing and showing what we know! Now it’s your
3
turn! Each of our growing classrooms is looking for parent
volunteers to come in weekly and help out with classroom
administrative duties. It’s a great way to get to see what your
3 child is experiencing during the day and a major way to help
out your child's teachers and become more closely integrated
3 into our classrooms. Please, if your interested, or able to lend a
little time, speak with your child's teacher and set times and
days for service. It would be great if each class had Parent
helpers! You could help as little as one hour a week!
Page 2
Room Updates!
California Golden Bears
By the end of October, the UC Berkeley
Golden Bears will be completing their
44th day of Kindergarten! Our word
bank has grown from 20 words to 36
words, and our love of reading in-
creases by the minute. We have
opened up our creative spirits in math
by forming geometric shapes with
macaroni noodles, pretzel sticks, and
cotton balls. As authors and illustra-
tors, we have explored and written
about our school and community and
realize as KIPPsters we are leaders of
tomorrow! As an extension of our
community, we celebrated Latino Heri-
tage Month in our classroom by singing
songs in Spanish, having bi-lingual read
alouds, making Guacamole together,
and learning the history of the Tortilla
and enjoying it toasted with but-
ter! Together, the Golden Bears are
working on having one more addition to
the Berkeley classroom: A Beta Fish as
our Class Pet.! Each day, the Golden
Bears have an opportunity to SPROUT
“In the out a classmate on the ways they are
Being Nice and Working Hard. By
schoolhouse, we doing so, they get to place a Goldfish
cracker in the fishbowl! Once the
fishbowl is FULL, we will welcome our
have the heart class pet with open arms!
UConn Huskies
of the whole
In science the UConn Huskies have
society.” been learning about animals. Sprout
Out to all the families who completed
their animal research project and
Henry Golden learned some new fun facts about their
child’s favorite animal. Keep the great
scientific questions coming! Also, as
part of our social studies theme on
school, community and family jobs, a
special Sprout Out to Mr. Beckford and
Mr. Ward for joining us in Husky Coun-
try to talk about your jobs! Finally, in the
spirit of staying healthy, Sprout Out to
the families who have sent in delicious,
nutritious snacks so far and for those of
We’re Sprouting Out!
 We would like to thank ALL our UC
Berkeley Golden Bear Families for their
promptness and commitment to our
rotating snack schedule. Our Berkeley
Bears enjoy all the healthy snacks and
100% juices you send every
day. Because of you, our minds are so
sharp! Thank you!
 Big Sprout out to Ms. Ramos, Ms.
Prince, Ms. Cruz and Ms. Sillah for
coming up extra big with classroom
snacks!
you who sent in more hand sanitizer
and Clorox wipes! Thank you - these
efforts go a long way!
Columbia Lions
In the Columbia Lions’ den, we have
begun our star student of the day
routine. Each day a student is picked
randomly to be celebrated. The star
student wears a smiley badge and gets
interviewed for the class book. In math
this month we’ve learned arithmetic
sentences and began working on num-
ber stories and basic problem solving
visualizations. We have been turning
things up a notch by building on many
of our basic arithmetic and literacy
skills. Along those lines, we would love
it if you all take a look at our “Take-
Away Teddy” display in the hallway
when you visit for Parent Teacher
Conference Night. We have also built
on our knowledge of basic shapes by
learning to recognize lines of symmetry.
In literacy, we have been learning about
fantasy fiction, realistic fiction, and
nonfiction works. We’ve been working
hard in centers to sharpen our skills
while having fun acquiring new ones.
Soon we will be great readers, espe-
cially with all the focus we’ve been
putting on blending word segments and
practicing sight words.
Michigan Wolverines
The Wolverines are working hard at
blending the sounds of letters together
to make words!! We sort words that
begin with the same sound and have
even begun writing three-letter words
like cat, fan, web, and net! In science,
we’re learning about how the different
seasons affect animals. Do they
adapt? Do they hibernate? Do they
change colors? In math, we just
learned about symmetry, continue to
explore the calendar, and count higher
and higher every day. Would you
 Big Sprout out to Ms. Watson for her
encouraging words and mid day texts !
Sprout out to Ms. Cruz and Ms.
Herrera for the great goodie bags !
believe that in writing, some of our
stories are getting sooooooo long that
we’ll soon be writing in booklets instead
o f o n si n g l e p i e ce s o f p a -
per?? Wow! Next up in social studies
will be learning all about our special
families. It’s an exciting time in the
Wolverines classroom!!
Music
The month of October has brought
about many exciting activities for the
musicians at KIPP Academy Elemen-
tary. We have continued to sing and
move in dynamic and creative ways as
we learn about rhythm and keeping the
beat. November is going to ring in a unit
on genre where we will focus on both
popular and classical music. By creat-
ing our own listening maps, we will
begin to understand the concepts of
simple melodic and rhythmic notation.
With the holiday show fast upon us, we
will begin to focus our attention on
rehearsing and performance etiquette
for the December 21st presentation.
Gym
Rolls and throws and catches, oh my!
In gym, we’ve been using our arms to
catch, throw, aim and roll our way to
physical education greatness. In the
following unit we will be working on
striking objects with both short and long
handled instruments. Through a series
of PowerPoint presentations, we will
become familiar with sports such as
volleyball, tennis, water polo, baseball
and basketball. With our new-found
skills in tow, we will begin to play our
own versions of these popular sports.
Volume 1, Issue 1 Page 3

Price Point! A message from Ms. Price

November is upon us! This means the Arison Cruz Mathew Ramos
holidays are approaching, leaves are Richard Dixon Edsel Tawiah
turning (or have already turned) and D’Andrew Gilliam Jalen Watson
yes, it is getting colder! I’m happy to Dekai Gray Jamir Watson
announce that we have finally found our Shadae Green
beautiful Texas Orange color in long Andrew Guishard This is a great accomplishment, and we
sleeve t-shirts! We will be selling them Zayenabu Kenneh thank you—our families—who work
at Saturday School on November 14th. Aminata Konate hard to get our kids here on time and
We will also sell them every Friday David Lora every day. We appreciate your effort!!
morning (7:15-7:45 AM) and afternoon Moussa Sakho
( 4:00-4:20 PM) after November 14th. Madison-Dakota
Thanks so much for your patience!
A special congratulations to the follow-
Congratulations to those KIPPsters who ing KIPPsters who have not had any
have Perfect Attendance and No Tar- absences or tardies for the entire year:
dies for the month of October (Oct 1 to Diana Betances
Oct 26) Nicola Burgess
Jaison Beckford Erwin Castillo
Franklin Burgos Hamza Morou

Be Nice! Work Hard! Smile!

“Education is
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A few parents have asked adultednyc.info/LearningCenters/BxALC/ not preparation
me about available computer classes for index.html.
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find the following resource that I am very have any questions.
excited about: “The Office of Adult and Mr. Nuñez
Continuing Education, the largest adult education is life
education provider in New York State,
offers basic education and vocational itself.”
education classes to adults. Our day,
evening and Saturday classes are all
tuition-free and taught by certified teach-
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offer GED classes, English as a Second
John Dewey
Language and Career and Technical
education. The BX center is located at
3450 E. Tremont Ave. This is the only
location where you can register, however,
there are several different locations in the
BX where you can take the actual com-
puter classes. Their phone number is

Teacher Tip of the Month: to play listening games. For example,

Being strong listeners is a huge you can say, “I’m going to give you a
skill! One way to have our children mission. I want you to bring me the
become better listeners is to talk to our following items: a hairbrush from your
children ALL the time. Tell him/her bedroom, slippers from my room,
about an interesting story you read in etc. You can also do this in the super-
the newspaper. Describe a conversa- market or any other store.
tion you had at work with a
friend. When you go shopping tell him/
her all about the shopping trips you
used to take with your parents. Get into
the habit of narrating everyday
chores. If you are in the kitchen to-
gether while you are making dinner, for
example, you can say, “I need to meas-
ure your two cups of water and then
add one cup of rice…” Another way is