Week of December 10, 2012

Dear Parents: 

Please read to the very end of this blog. There is a lot of important information for you and a survey at the end. 

I'm sure you've heard about the new member of our class... Buster! What a great addition he is proving to be... wink, wink!

Our gift drive bins are starting to fill up in the hallway outside our classroom!  Thank you so much! Remember that the gift drive ends at 8:00 this Friday! So, please have your wrapped and labeled gifts here by then! The children will carry the gifts to the athletic center Friday morning. It is always so much fun to see the gym filled with gifts for those children so less fortunate than us. I thank you so much for your generosity and helping our children feel the joy and blessing of giving.

If you wanted to place a Scholastic book order but forgot to send in the order forms today, you may still go online and place your order. Today is the deadline, however. Our class code for ordering online is on the letter attached to the order forms that came home. There are many other books available online as well. Books will be in before we leave for the holidays.

This week I will be sending home flyers from Highlights, a magazine for children. If you are interested in ordering, they are offering it a great price! I know my children always loved Highlights. Even if you are not interested, please sign and return the yellow flyer to school by next Monday. Our class will receive a free gift just for returning all 14 flyers - whether orders are placed or not! 

Now, a look at what is going on in our classroom this week: 

Word Work: This week as we continue working on the long vowel/silent e rule with cvce patterns, we are focusing on long o words. Remember that you can give your child some FUN extra practice with this skill by clicking on the Starfall link on the right side of this blog, then click Learn to Read, and then #6 Jake's Tale. Please remember that your child should be practicing reading and spelling the word card words on the ring each night. Having your child compose and write sentences using these words is excellent practice. Remind your child to write "strong" sentences. We will continue to work on homophones and contractions all year.

  

Reading Workshop: We are learning that comprehension means understanding what we read and that remains our focus. As we learn new strategies, we don't throw out the old ones! We are always practicing the new strategies along with the ones we have already learned. Therefore, continue to use the "stop and think" markers and stickies as you read at home with your child. Retelling is a huge help in understanding what we read! We have been practicing retelling our books to ourselves and now are retelling with our reading partners. We've learned that retelling is more meaningful and helps us to understand more when we retell using the character names and details. We're also learning to share ideas and ask questions of each other to help us think about what we read. When your child reads with you at home, please take the time to let them "retell" and talk about what they have read. The children will be bringing home "retelling" bookmarks to help practice this skill when reading at home. 

Writing Workshop:  After comparing realistic fiction versus other types of fiction books, we used our imaginations and wrote our own innovations of a book we read called “Snowmen at Night”. The imaginative stories (and their beautiful q-tip painted illustrations) are posted in our hallway. We have now begun to focus on writing a realistic fiction story. We mapped out story elements such as character, plot, and setting and now are continuing to develop our stories by thinking of a problem or problems for the character to face and then possible solutions.

Math:  We continue working on telling time to the quarter hour. As this is a difficult concept, your child would benefit from repetitive practice. I am sending home a baggie with Time Match cards in it for you to use to play games at home with your child. Many variations can be played. Use your imagination. So far, we have played a regular matching game and Go Fish with it. Games are a great way to help children understand, practice, and master difficult math concepts. Please play often! Also, the "Fact Power" cards will again come home on Tuesday to be practiced each day and then returned to school on Friday. Spending just 5 - 10 minutes with these each day will be a tremendous help to your child in developing automaticity (or FACT POWER) of these facts. Today we are beginning Unit 5 in math. It will be a BIG and important unit covering many new skills. This week we will focus on place value with tens and ones and the relation symbols of greater than, less than, and equal to.

Science: As our solar system unit continues, we will focus on the stars this week. We’ll learn about their characteristics and about the pictures they make in the sky… the constellations. Our next field trip will be to the Science Center/Planetarium on February 5 where we will get to see the night sky in all of its glory! It will be a great culminating experience to our solar system unit!

Keep an eye out for another post this week of our culminating project work that the children completed after our human body unit. We have completed a voice thread showing a sampling of what they learned during the unit. I just need to learn how to post it!

Sleep in! Skip breakfast! What an easy morning we have in store for you! Come to school in your PJs on Thursday, December 20th. We're having a "come as you are pajama party" beginning at 8:30 that morning! We'll have a breakfast buffet so no need to make breakfast at home that morning! The children may stay in their PJs the rest of the morning or you may send in a change of clothes for them. If your child is wearing slippers with the PJs, please be sure to send in sneakers and socks to change into as we will be having PE that morning. We will also be going to the Lower School Holiday Sing in the theater at 11:00. All parents are welcome to join us for the pajama party (you may come in your PJ's too) as well as the holiday sing. Dismissal will be at noon that day!

Other Important Dates to Mark on Your Calendar:

January 2 will be a Professional Development Day for teachers. No school for students.

School resumes for children on Thursday, January 3. 

School is closed on Monday, January 21 for Martin Luther King Day.

Grandparents/Special Friends Day is Friday, January 25. Noon dismissal that day!

Field Trip to the Science Center/Planetarium will be Tuesday, February 5. We will eat lunch at school at 11:00 that day! Parents are welcome to join us by meeting us at the Science Center or following the bus. We will leave school at 11:30. Our tour begins at 12:00 and we will leave to return to school at 2:00.

Spring Conference Day will be Thursday, February 7. There will be no school for the children that day. A schedule will be coming home in January. If you need a specific time, please email me now. 

Friday, February 15 will be a Professional Development Day for teachers. No school for students. 

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

Volunteers this week:

• Wednesday - Library checkout - Lorraine Thorpe and David nguyen - 2:10
• Thursday - Math Game - Kim Gross - 10:30
• Friday - Art - Heidi Joswig or David Richarson - 9:15
• Friday - Parent Reader - Lorraine Thorpe - 2:15

Finally, I am conducting an independent survey... please let me know if you read this blog. That's it... that's the survey! 

Have a great week!

Susan