Saturday, November 5, 2011

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














No comments:

Post a Comment