Week of November 28, 2011

Dear Parents,

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed the week together with your loved ones. I had a wonderful long weekend with my children and grandson but was so sad when they left Sunday. I miss them so much! The house is too quiet now. My words of advice to you... enjoy these days while your children are young and living with you. Treasure every moment!





















We finished reading our class novel, Charlotte's Web, the week before Thanksgiving break. That Thursday, we got together with our third grade buddies in Mrs. Hensler's class for another activity. This time the partnerships each chose a setting from the story and completed a diarama to show that setting complete with characters and scenery. They worked so well together in their cooperative partnerships! Their diaramas are amazing and will come home before the winter break.

In language arts, our spelling focus this week is on the r-controlled vowel /ar/ as in "farm". We are also practicing adding the inflections -s, -ed, and -ing to words. We will also practice writing the names of holidays and remembering that they begin with capital letters. Our wall words this week are again, feel, house, know, loud, Mrs., put, and say.

During Reading Workshop, we will talk about ways that smart readers help themselves understand what they read... such as stopping and rereading slowly, studying the pictures, and asking themselves "What's going on in the story? and What is the author's purpose?" We will also use sticky notes to mark places that make us "think" in our books.

Last week we had our second writing celebration in which the children shared their stories. They gave each other such wonderful compliments as writers! In our new and third unit of Writing Workshop, we are talking about the importance of conventions to make our writing more readable. Today we made a list of what makes writing "easy to read" and we reread all of the stories we have in our notebooks and sorted them into "easy to read writing" and "not so easy to read writing". During this unit we will put a spotlight on things such as the proper case of letters, using correct spacing, appropriate punctuation, neatness, and spelling both high frequency and unknown words. We continue to write about the "small moments" in our lives. Encourage your child to tell you the stories of his or her day no matter where those moments occur... at home, at school, at soccer. Tell him or her, "You should write about that!"

In math, we will work more with measurement, including the ruler, tape measure, and measuring temperature. We will also begin practicing telling time to the quarter hour. We will begin making our number scrolls, so please send in the empty and CLEAN Pringles can this week if you have not done so.

In science, we began our new unit on the Solar System today! This week we will be talking about what makes day and night, why we have seasons, and learning about largest star in our solar system, the sun. We will need a few items for special projects during this unit. Please send in a 4 inch styrofoam ball, an empty toilet tissue tube, and any scraps of sandpaper that you may have. We don't need much sandpaper so please don't worry about buying any. We need to have these in by next Monday. Thank you! I am sure that this will prove to be another exciting unit for the children!

Other Important Events:

The gift drive began this week and ends December 9. You should have received information regarding details of the family our class is helping. There are two bins in our hallway to collect the gifts. What a great way to help our children learn the "gift of giving"!

The first grade Pajama Party will take place on Friday, December 16th. We will begin with a breakfast buffet! All parents are welcome to join us - in your jammies, too! This will no doubt be a favorite day of the year!

The Lower Division Holiday Sing Along will also take place that day at 11:00. Dismissal will be at noon.

Volunteers This Week:

• Tuesday - Art - 12:00 - Debbie Boensch
• Wednesday - Math Game - 1:00 - Susannah Malison
• Thursday - Library Checkout - 12:00 - Kimberly Burke and Ana Brinkley
• Friday - Parent Reader - 2:15 - Jill Emerson

I will not be at school on Thursday as I will be at a workshop in Tampa with Dr. Bianco and Joyce Graham. However, I have a full day planned for the children!

Enjoy the cool weather this week!
Susan

It is Spirit Day along with Poetry in the Park tomorrow! Your child may wear spirit clothes along with their live "sick" illustration! It will be cold sitting outside in the morning, so please dress appropriately! See you in the morning!

Week of November 7, 2011

Dear Parents:

Poetry in the Park is this Friday! If your child wakes up saying "I cannot go to school today"... PERFECT! Please keep practicing! Bring your chairs or blankets and get ready for a wonderful morning of both funny and lyrical poetry! It is truly one of the best days of the year at Shorecrest!

We also have the Book Fair this week in the Student Activity Center. This is the only fundraiser for the library. We will be browsing as a class at 8:45 on Tuesday morning. You are welcome to join us if you would like. Other hours for shopping (with or without your child) are from 8:00 - 4:00 Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday or from 8:00 - 5:30 on Wednesday.

Our service learning project and field trip to the SPCA was a huge success! Thank you so much to all of you who donated so many needed items for the animals at the SPCA. They were so appreciated! It was a wonderful experience for your child in "giving". Thank you also for the many carrots and apples brought on the field trip. The animals LOVED having so many treats and used good animal manners in taking them! :)

Although we have another shortened week due to the Professional Development Day Monday and Poetry in the Park on Friday morning, we are jam-packed with learning! This week our spelling and word work will focus on words that begin and end with the digraph /sh/ and words with initial blends of l, s, and r.In Spelling City, look for Week 12 for this week's spelling list. Our grammar focus will be on capitalizing the names of special people and places. During reading workshop, we have spent much time over the last month learning and practicing strategies for figuring out tricky words, noticing patterns in books, thinking about whether the words we are reading make sense, reading with a storyteller voice, and echo reading with our partners to help us read more fluently. This week we will spend time thinking about the meaning of the books we are reading and talking with our partners about the meaning. The goal is to remind the children that careful reading is not only about figuring out the words, but more about making sure we understand the story. If you are able to, please come to our classroom after Poetry in the Park ends on Friday and enjoy a few private moments with your child reading a book or two to you! Celebrate all that your child has accomplished in reading! This week we will also be talking more about the "setting" of stories - when and where the story takes place - and we will begin including the characters and setting in our story mapping. This week's wall words are could, happy, cold, night, saw, came, made, and were. The robust vocabulary introduced through literature will be reward, handsomely, cruel, greedy, consequences, and regret.

During writing workshop, the children have been working with their editing partners and this week will be working on fixing up their chosen pieces for publishing!

In math, we will take our unit 3 assessment, work on addition facts through domino addition, introduce the math message routine, and review thermometers and reading temperatures to the nearest two degrees.

I have posted some pictures from the Homecoming Pep Rally last Friday, a few from the SPCA field trip, and some from working in the classroom last week. I am creating a Flickr account and hope to have that up on my blog next week so that you will be able to see and access lots of pictures as I have too many to post here. Thank you to Susannah Malison, Kimberly Burke, and Jill Lemon for taking and sending me pictures!

Other Things to Remember:

• PLEASE help your child practice the words on the ring that comes home each Monday. Please practice READING and SPELLING the words EVERY day! Then please help your child remember to return the ring every THURSDAY. Last week only half the class remembered to return the word ring on time. This is part of the weekly homework responsibility. THANK YOU for your help!
  
• Holiday Gift Drive takes place November 28 - December 9. More information will be coming soon!
  

Volunteers this week:

• Tuesday - Art - 12:05 - Mary Harris
  
• Wednesday - Math game - 1:00 - Kelli Cross
  
• Thursday - Library Check-out - 12:00 - Kimberly Burke
  
• Friday - Parent Reader - 2:15 - Eva D'Agostino
  

See you Friday if not before...
Susan