Week of February 25, 2013

Dear Parents: 

Time Sensitive Alert! Don't forget that our class will be leading Town Meeting at 8:05 tomorrow (Monday). Please be sure that your child is on time to school! I hope that you will be able to join us at Town Meeting! 

Class Picture Day will be tomorrow, February 26. Picture order forms are available online on our website under Community-Parents Page and in E-bytes. 

The Relay for Life Cookout will be this Thursday, February 28. Children may wear purple shirts with uniform bottoms on Thursday in honor of Relay for Life.  Hotdogs and tofu dogs will be served. Please plan to have lunch with your child if you can. All proceeds will be donated to Relay for Life. There will be no Sage lunch offered Thursday! 

Please always be sure to read the all of the Important Reminders at the end of the blog. Information may have changed or been added. Obviously,  a lot is going on this week! 

Reading Workshop: As we discussed at our recent conferences, the children are reading with more accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. The characters in many of the books the children are reading are now more developed than just simply being an illustration on a page, and they offer an authentic way for children to invest in the story. In our new unit on characters, we'll be learning to get to know the characters in many ways by visualizing, inferring, predicting, making connections, and comparing and contrasting. In Reading Workshop this week, we will learn how we as readers learn more about the characters in our books by visualizing what they look like, using the narration, or words the author uses to tell about the story, and focusing on what the character says and doesn't say. When your child reads at home, talk with your child about the character(s) in the story...  character traits, and what they learn about the character when they read, and "how" they learn about the character. As you read with your child over the next couple of weeks,  you can begin to talk with your child about the character they may want to choose to dress as for character day on March 18! Remember, it should be a character from a favorite book so that your child can really get to know the character. The children will not only be dressing as the character on March 18, but will be sharing all they know about the character as they share the book. 

Word Work: We'll focus on r-controlled vowels this week, as in car and corn.

Ben enjoys word work activities!

Daven and Phoebe quiz each other on spelling high frequency words.

Ryan, Matthew, Avery, and Natalie enjoy making words with Mrs. Rauman!

Writing Workshop: We continue to work on writing for readers and will begin to learn about some revision techniques. I must say I am so pleased with the progress our writers are making!

Math: We will begin learning about telling time to the five minute interval and digital clocks this week. We'll also be introduced to our Math Reference Book that the children will continue to use in second grade as well. Our goal is to complete unit 6 this week and take the progress check (assessment) on Friday. So, look for it to come home early next week along with the unit 7 family letter.

Carson, Cyrus, Leni, and Kaja play Gator Attack with Carson's mom, a game that uses relation symbols (<, >, =) to compare two digit numbers.

Science: The children will finish presenting and teaching us about the planets this week. Their projects are displayed in our hallway. Take a look!

Keith, Sydney, and Kate practice identifying the planets of the solar system.

Social Studies: Our unit on America continues as we learn about our flag, take a virtual tour of the White House, and learn about Mount Rushmore.

Important Reminders: 

March 7 is Field Day.  Field Day will take place from 9:00 - 11:00. The PE coaches are assigning children to teams and will soon send home a note indicating the team your child is on. The teams are named for colors... green team, blue team, etc. The children are to wear that color shirt to school for Field Day.

March 8 will be a Professional Development Day for teachers. Spring Break for students begins Friday, March 8. School resumes for students on Monday, March 18.

Heads-up: March 18, the day the students return from Spring Break, will be Character Day during Reading Week in the Lower School! Your child will be asked to choose a character from a favorite book and come to school dressed as that character and prepared to talk about their character/book. Therefore, they should have read the book and know the character and book well.

Reading Week will be the week of March 18 - 22. The entire week will be dedicated to Mrs. Weinman. The schedule is as follows:

• Monday - Character Day! All children in the Lower School will be dressed as their favorite book character and bring their book with them to Town Meeting!
• Tuesday - "Drop Everything and Read" Day - Your child will need to bring a beach towel to sit on and several books to read as the Lower School will read together outside from 8:15 - 8:50.
• Wednesday - We will view the Bookshelf Project with Mrs. Smay.
• Thursday - Mystery Reader and Buddy Reading
• Friday - Oldie Goldie Book Sale

On Monday, March 25, we will dedicate the new playground to Mrs. Weinman and the children are asked to bring a flowering plant for the garden in memory of her. We will be planting them that day. The memorial will begin at 8:05a.m. Parents are welcome to join us. 

Volunteers this week: 

• Wednesday - Library Checkout - 2:10 - David Nguyen and Kim Gross
• Thursday - Math Game - 10:30 - David Richardson
• Friday - Art - 9:15 - Kristen Danielson
• Friday - Parent Reader - 2:15 - Kim Gross

Have a great week!

Susan

Week of February 19, 2013

Dear Parents: 

We certainly had a wonderful Valentine's party last Thursday. A HUGE THANK YOU to Charlene Hosseini for the delicious chocolate fountain! What a special treat it was to have strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, pretzels, and rice krispy treats for dipping. Mmmmm good! She also decorated a beautiful table! Thank you to all the parents who came to help us celebrate! This is always the children's favorite holiday to celebrate at school! I added lots of pictures to our shutterfly site so if you weren't able to join us, you can take a peek at the fun! Parents, as always, please add any pictures you took!

Scholastic Book Orders: I added a gadget to the right side of the blog that will take you directly to Scholastic's website so that you can place book orders online! Be sure to plug in our classroom code. Remember that you will receive a coupon for a free book for placing an order online. Of course, you may also send in the paper order form (with check) to me and I will place the order for you. Please do whatever is most convenient for you. Not only are you getting a great deal on books for your child to read at home, but our class earns free books when you order! So, the children and I thank you!

We have another short week at school due to the President's Day holiday, but, as always, we will be busy as we have fun learning! Here's a peek at some of the things we will be doing.

Word Work: The children and I went through their word rings last week and they took home all of the words they can read with automaticity. As these words come home throughout the year, I encourage you to have your child practice alphabetizing by filing them alphabetically in a plastic word box. Please continue to review reading and spelling these words as well. This week our word work will focus on spelling patterns ending with -ll (all, ell, ill).

Reading Workshop: We'll get to know the characters in our books and talk about them with our partners. We'll learn to use several sources to help us get to know the characters, such as the illustrations, narration, and dialogue. Our reading response notebooks will come home this week. Look for them in your child's green bag on Wednesday! The children will use their just right book (in their baggie) to complete a graphic organizer on the main idea and supporting details. The graphic organizer will be glued inside the yellow reading response notebook. It is the same graphic organizer that we used and completed today in class with our Scholastic News Weekly Reader. 

Writing Workshop: We began a new unit on "writing for readers". We decided on some things that we can do to make our writing easy for readers to read, including the correct use of capitalization and punctuation, appropriate spacing, neat handwriting without a lot of erasing, as well as using resources and all that we know to help spell the best we can. When your child writes at home, encourage him/her to think about the things that make writing easy to read!

Math: On Valentine's Day, Mrs. Gross helped us with some yummy math! We graphed candy hearts and used them to practice addition facts!

Leni, Cyrus, Kaja, and Carson have fun with some yummy Candy Heart Math!

This week, we'll continue with addition facts practice; have experiences finding the value of collections of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies; introduce five minute intervals on the analog clock, and introduce digital clocks.

Science: We will continue learning about the planets of our solar system as the children present their planet projects.

Carson and Phoebe present their project on Mercury.

Cyrus and Matthew present their project on Neptune.

Kate and Sydney use tissue paper to make the land and water of planet Earth.

Phoebe, Ben, and Keith have fun using cray-pas and glitter to make the planet, Jupiter.

Social Studies: We'll be learning about our first president, George Washington, comparing him to Abraham Lincoln, and thinking about what we would do as president. Town Meeting today was a great  way to jump-start our thinking!

Other important reminders: 

School is closed on Monday, February 18, for Presidents' Day.

Our class will be leading Town Meeting on February 25.

Class Picture Day will be on Tuesday, February 26. Picture order forms are available online on our website under Community-Parents Page and in E-bytes.   

The Relay for Life Cookout will be on Thursday, February 28. Hotdogs and tofu dogs will be served. Please return your order form and plan to have lunch with your child on this day if you can. All proceeds will be donated to Relay for Life. There will be no Sage lunch offered that day!

March 7 is Field Day. 

March 8 will be a Professional Development Day for teachers. Spring Break for students begins Friday, March 8. School resumes for students on Monday, March 18.

Heads-up: March 18, the day the students return from Spring Break, will be Character Day during Reading Week in the Lower School! Your child will be asked to choose a character from a favorite book and come to school dressed as that character and prepared to talk about their character/book.

Reading Week will be the week of March 18 - 22. The entire week will be dedicated to Mrs. Weinman. The schedule is as follows:

Monday - Character Day! All children in the Lower School will be dressed as their favorite book character and bring their book with them to Town Meeting!
Tuesday - "Drop Everything and Read" Day - Your child will need to bring a beach towel to sit on and several books to read as the Lower School will read together outside from 8:15 - 8:50.
Wednesday - We will view the Bookshelf Project with Mrs. Smay.
Thursday - Mystery Reader and Buddy Reading
Friday - Oldie Goldie Book Sale

On Monday, March 25, we will dedicate the new playground to Mrs. Weinman and the children are asked to bring a flowering plant for the garden in memory of her. We will be planting them that day. The memorial will begin at 8:05a.m. Parents are welcome to join us. 

Volunteers this week: 

• Wednesday - Library Checkout - 2:10 - Kristen Danielson and Mary Hind
• Thursday - Math Game - 10:30 - Donna Main
• Friday - Art - 9:15 - Sharon Cannella
• Friday - Parent Reader - 2:15 - Lorraine Thorpe

Have a great week!

Susan

Week of February 11, 2013

Dear Parents: 

I want to thank you for your concern for my little Chase. I am happy to report that he is doing SO MUCH BETTER! He was released from the hospital after 3 days and, according to my daughter, gets better and better each day. Unfortunately, he has to go back to daycare this week, so I am keeping my fingers crossed and praying that he can fight off the germs and stay well.  A couple of you asked me to share a picture so here I go!

My sweet little Chase smiling again!

Owen sharing a book with his little brother.

I hope you all had a chance to enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend! While they were shoveling snow in the northeast and trying to stay warm without power, my husband and I enjoyed spending time outside in the beautiful sunny weather. I'm sure some of you were boating, at the beach, or doing something to enjoy the outdoors. Don't you just love living in Florida?

Don't forget that at the end of this blog, there are always important reminders of special date and events coming up as well as reminders for the week's scheduled volunteers! 

On Thursday, we will be celebrating Valentine's Day at 1:30 in our class. The children may wear valentine attire on Thursday... red, pink... just please remember that it is not "anything goes" for the dress code that day. The highlight for the children is always opening their valentine cards! Parents are welcome to join us. 

Also, don't forget that Friday is a Professional Development Day for teachers. There will be no school for students. 

Until then, we will be quite busy in our classroom. This week in word study, we are focusing on words with the short sound /ou/ spelled either ou as in cloud or ow as in cow. The children wore bandaids in class today to help them remember the spelling rule! So, if you see your child with a bandaid on, ask them why! 

In reading workshop, we are finishing up our nonfiction unit and will be starting a unit on characters. When I think back on beloved books from when I was young, it's usually the characters in the stories that first come to mind. The characters often stay with us even when we finish a book. So, over the next several weeks, we will look closely at the characters in the books we read. 

In writing workshop, our focus over the next several weeks will be on making our writing easy for others to read. We'll also learn some revision techniques as well.

In math, we'll be introduced to the centimeter in metric measure. We'll practice measuring lines and objects to the nearest centimeter. We'll also work more with frames and arrows, fact families, and the what's my rule routine. 

In science, we worked on finishing up our projects today and began getting ready for our presentations. The children worked with their partners to divide up the teaching.  They will begin teaching the class about their planets this week as they present their projects! I also added lots of pictures to our class shutterfly site that I took last week and today of the children working on their projects. They were added to the Solar System Project album. Check them out! Here are just a few.

This week also begins our social studies unit on America! Over the next several weeks, we'll learn about important people in the history of our country, historic landmarks, and symbols of America. 

Other important reminders: 

Please remember that re-enrollment period ends Friday, February 15!

Friday, February 15, will also be a Professional Development Day for teachers. There will be no school for students that day.

School is closed on Monday, February 18, for Presidents' Day.

Our class will be leading Town Meeting on February 25.

Class Picture Day will be on Tuesday, February 26. Picture order forms are available online on our website under Community-Parents Page and in E-bytes.   

The Relay for Life Cookout will be on Thursday, February 28. Hotdogs and tofu dogs will be served. A letter will come home soon with more information. Please plan to have lunch with your child on this day if you can. All proceeds will be donated to Relay for Life.

March 7 is Field Day. 

March 8 will be a Professional Development Day for teachers. Spring Break for students begins Friday, March 8. 

Reading Week will be the week of March 18 - 22. The Oldie Goldie Book Sale is on Friday, March 22. The entire week will be dedicated to Mrs. Weinman. 

Just a heads-up: March 18, the day the students return from Spring Break, will be Character Day during Reading Week in the Lower School! Your child will be asked to choose a character from a favorite book and come to school dressed as that character

On March 25, we will also dedicate the new playground to Mrs. Weinman. The memorial will be at 8:05a.m. Parents are welcome to join us. 

Volunteers this week: 

• Wednesday - Library Checkout - 2:10 – Amber Ferrol and Joswig/Richardson
• Thursday - Math Game - 10:30 - Kim Gross

Happy Valentine's Day!

Susan

Week of February 4, 2013

Dear Parents: 

I hope you all had a nice weekend. My weekend had its ups and downs. My cousin's daughter was married Friday evening. That was an up! My daughter, Tara, was a bridesmaid. That was an up! All three of my children were here for the wedding, including my daughter-in-law, and granddog. That was an up! We had lots of family in town, so that was an up!  I took last Thursday and Friday off to take care of my two grandbabies as Tara was involved in lots of wedding festivities. That was both an up and down because, unfortunately, my daughter and grandsons were sick. I was so worried about Chase as he just turned four months old last Sunday. I held onto him for the three and a half days that they were here. We did the humidifier, Vicks, etc. that her pediatrician had recommended, but I felt like he was just getting worse. On Saturday they flew home to Texas. Chase continued to get worse. On Sunday morning, Tara took him to the hospital. Right now, they say he has bronchiolitis and are treating him as if he has pneumonia. They kept him in the hospital overnight to give him treatment and it doesn't look like he is going to be released today. So, if you feel inclined, I would so appreciate prayers and good wishes sent his way! Thank you!

Now, on to happy news! We have a busy week ahead! Our Field trip to the Science Center/Planetarium will be tomorrow, February 5! We are so excited! We will eat lunch at school at 11:00 before we go. Parents are welcome to join us by following the bus or meeting us at the Science Center. We will leave school at 11:30. Our tour begins at 12:00 and we will leave to return to school at 2:00. On Wednesday, we will go to the theater at 1:00 for a show called "Woodland Tales". I am also looking forward to sharing your child's progress with you at our conference this week. I am sending home a reminder schedule with your child today. Friday is the 100th day of school! Can you believe it? If you have not done so yet, please  be sure to have your child bring in their share of our 100 day snack by tomorrow!  

Valentines Day is quickly approaching! We will celebrate the afternoon of February 14 at 1:30. Parents are welcome to join us if you like. I will be sending a list of names for the children to use in writing out their valentine cards. Please have the cards in no later than Monday, February 11. 

In Reading Workshop, we continue to learn strategies to help us be great non-fiction readers. 

In Writing Workshop, we will continue working on our All-About books. We will finish writing our chapters and add other special features of non-fiction books.

In Math, the children will have experiences revisiting the relationship between addition and subtraction. We'll be working with fact triangles, fact families, and using the Facts Table for subtraction. 

In Science, the children will continue working on their planet projects. Last week partners worked together to make plans for constructing the visual part of the project. They collaborated on a design and came up with the list of materials they would need. 

Avery and Keith work together.

Daven and Ryan decide on their plan!

Natalie and Leni talk about the materials they will need for their project. 

Sydney and Ben decide who will be responsible for each part of their project.

This week we will work on constructing the projects! Lots more collaboration will be going on. It's going to be a lot of fun!

We celebrated Keith's 7th birthday today! Happy Birthday, Keith!

We enjoyed talking about our feelings with Mrs. Fierce during our Guidance lesson today.

Other important reminders: 

Please don't forget and don't delay! Re-enroll today! Re-enrollment period is February 1 - 15. 

Friday, February 15, will be a Professional Development Day for teachers. There will be no school for students that day.

School is closed on Monday, February 18, for Presidents' Day.

Class Picture Day will be on Wednesday, February 26. 

The Relay for Life Cookout will be on Thursday, February 28. Hotdogs and tofu dogs will be served. A letter will come home soon with more information. Please plan to have lunch with your child on this day if you can. All proceeds will be donated to Relay for Life.

Reading Week will be the week of March 18 - 22. The Oldie Goldie Book Sale is on Friday, March 22. The entire week will be dedicated to Mrs. Weinman. 

On March 25, we will also dedicate the new playground to Mrs. Weinman. The memorial will be at 8:05a.m. Parents are welcome to join us. 

Volunteers this week: 

• Wednesday - Library Checkout - 2:10 – Sharon Cannella and Lorraine Thorpe
• Thursday - Math Game - Conference Day - no school
• Friday - Art - 9:15 - Charlene Hosseini
• Friday - Parent Reader - 2:15 - David Richardson or Heidi Joswig 

Until next time - 
Susan