Week of October 22, 2012

Dear Parents:

Thank you so much for coming to our writing celebration on Friday! The children were so excited to read their stories to you over and over and over! You wrote such heart-felt and inspiring compliments to the children. Thank you for celebrating them as the authors they are! Oh, and I can't forget to thank you for the delicious treats many of you provided  - what a feast! Such wonderful children deserve wonderful parents and I appreciate you ALL! I have lots of pictures from the celebration but am unable to post any in the blog right now as there is still an issue with my computer involving iphoto. I hope it will be resolved this week and I will be able to download photos to our class shutterfly site. I promise pictures will also be coming of the cow eye dissection last week and the homecoming pep rally.

Your child's individual first grade pictures came home at the end of last week. I thought they were all fabulous! However, picture retakes are tomorrow. If you would like your child's picture retaken, please send in the picture package with your child tomorrow. 

Last week, Sharon Hauser from the SPCA brought her dog, Rusty, to meet our first graders and kick off our first grade service-learning project. This morning, she brought Rusty to Town Meeting to help us tell the rest of the lower school about our service-learning project to help the SPCA. Mrs. Hauser adopted Rusty from the SPCA about 10 years ago. Check out the Service Learning link on e-bytes to see pictures of Rusty and the childen from last week. You will see why we fell in love with him! This week some of the children will be visiting the other classes of the lower school to tell them about our service project and to encourage them to donate items on the wish list for the animals at the SPCA. Thank you to Charlene Hosseini for bringing in the bins for collecting the needed items. The bins, located in the hallways and breezeways, need filling! Blankets, towels, treats, food, chew toys are just a few of the items you might consider sending in. Check out the SPCA website for a complete list of things they need.

http://www.spcatampabay.org/page.aspx?pid-396

Reading Workshop: Readers listen to the "song" of a text by reading with fluency, phrasing, and the sounds of stories and poems. Over the next few weeks, we'll work on reading in a voice that sounds like talking by reading in phrases and, of course, rereading when necessary.  We'll also continue to pay attention to punctuation as we read and to use a storyteller voice that expresses the mood of the text. We’ll not only be reading books during this workshop time, but we'll be reading lots of poetry as well. We’ll look at how poets “see” things, listen for the “music” and the “voice” of poetry, and learn to appreciate all types of poetry. While we have learned many strategies for figuring out tricky words, we want to learn how to use the most efficient strategy. We’ll practice all the strategies we have learned including using chunks and analogies (word families) and to help read new or tricky words in the poems we read. Poetry in the Park will be our culminating celebration for this unit. You’ll enjoy a wonderful morning of poetry as you hear our poem as well as many others. You’ll also get to see some of our own poetry displayed!

Word Work: We are working on words with short vowel /e/ and the word families _ed, _en, _et, and _ent. We’ll continue to work with 2 and 3 letter initial blends and digraphs as in fled or shred. We will also learn about nouns.

Writing Workshop: We are beginning our poetry unit of study in writing as well.  We’ll use our hearts, minds, and imaginations to take in the details of our lives in new ways. This week, we’ll spend some time observing the objects the children brought today. We’ll use all our senses as we describe them. We’ll look at these ordinary everyday things with a poet’s eyes. Then, we’ll practice changing our observations into poems by experimenting with line breaks (format).

Math: This week I am introducing a new routine called Frames and Arrows. You may refer back to the Unit 3 Family Letter for an explanation of it. You will also find a basic explanation in this week's homework calendar. We will also practice counting with a calculator and work with dimes.

Science: This week we are learning about our muscles, the lungs and respiratory system, and the digestive system. We will finish up this fantastic study of the human body next week. The children have loved it and so have I!

Just a heads-up! Our class will be celebrating two birthdays on Friday, November 16, which will be our last day of school before Thanksgiving break.  Therefore, our class will have our Thanksgiving  party at school on Thursday afternoon, November 15^th at 1:45. More information will come home about it later.

Things to remember:

• The Halloween Parade and Fall Festival take place next Wednesday, October 31. The parade begins at 8:30. Please send your child to school in his or her costume. They will change after the parade into play clothes. If you are accompanying your child to the festival, please be at the classroom no later than 9:45 to pick up your child. Otherwise, they will be dismissed to the festival at 9:45.
• The Book Fair will take place the week of November 5^th in the Janet Root Theater Lobby and the Student Center. Our class will be browsing on Tuesday morning at 10:05. If you would like to come shop with your child, you can do so before and after school, before 8:25, and during recess (1:00 – 1:30) each day.
• Poetry in the Park will be on Thursday, November 8^th at 8:30 a.m. Our class voted to recite the poem, "The Creature in the Classroom" by Jack Prelutsky. The poem was sent home last week. Please keep working with your child on memorizing this poem at home.
• The Holiday Gift Drive begins December 3^rd and ends December 14^th.

Volunteers this week:

• Wednesday - Library Checkout (2:10) – Amber Ferrol and Kristen Danielson
• Thursday - Math Game (10:30) – David Richardson
• Friday - Art – (9:15) Kim Gross

Take care and love each other…

Susan