Week of April 1, 2013

Dear Parents: 

Ryan did a great job leading Town Meeting this morning with Senor Zamoff!

Relay for Life is this week! Don't forget that the children may wear purple shirts all week! They will still need to wear uniform bottoms. On Friday, we will commence Relay at an all school assembly kick off at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, April 5. After an all school ceremony/celebration, we'll take a lap around the track with the whole school and the students will also walk the track with their PE class that day. That evening the entire football field and track will be filled with booths, fun activities, and supporters walking the track to fight cancer! If you haven't been before, please join us. It's a wonderful experience! Our classroom purple-linked chain is growing and will be added to the chains from all of the other classes to be displayed around the track at Relay for Life.

To celebrate the start of the Rays season, children are allowed to wear Tampa Bay Rays shirts tomorrow (Tuesday) rather than purple shirts if they choose to. 

On Thursday, we have a field trip to All Children's Hospital to enjoy their musical production called "What's So Good About Feeling Bad?" It's a fantastic, fun, and educational show about the human body with doctors, nurses, and hospital staff as the actors/singers! We will not be eating lunch until about 12:30 when we return to school, so PLEASE make sure that your child eats a good breakfast that morning and brings a snack to have at school before we leave on the trip! Thank you! Children are allowed to wear purple shirts with uniform bottoms on the field trip.

We enjoyed playing Sight Word Bingo last week with jelly bean markers!

Word Work: This week we are working on words with y as a vowel making the long e sound. When y is at the end of a word it makes either the long e or long i sound. When y is at the beginning of a word, it makes the "y" sound.  Ask your child about the story we learned today to help us remember!

Reading Workshop: We have completed our unit on getting to know the characters in our books. This week we are revisiting tricky word strategies, practicing fluency, and reading with appropriate voice inflection.

Writing Workshop: We continue in our revision unit as we work on revising leads while revisiting some texts that we have read before to help us focus on the leads the authors used. We'll also work on showing not telling. If an author says, "I was happy," that is telling. If an author writes, "I skipped all the way home, humming happy songs as if my heart would burst," that's showing. 

Avery looks for ways to revise his writing to make it better!

Kaja adds details to her writing.

Keith and Carson work together to plan revision of their writing.

After working with her partner, Kate adds to her story using her special green revision pen! 

Sydney shares the start of her story as she and Natalie work on revising leads. 

Matthew and Ben help each other revise their leads to make them stronger.

Leni listens to Phoebe read her story.

Sydney enjoys writing workshop time!

Cyrus listens to Ryan's story as they work together to plan revision.

Kaja and Daven work together to revise their stories.

Keith works hard on his story.

Math: We took the Unit 7 math assessment today. Look for it to be coming home. We'll begin unit 8 tomorrow. In this unit, we will be reviewing counting and exchanging coins, counting money including dollars, writing in dollar and cent notation, facilitating the use of money to explore place-value,  extending place-value concepts to hundreds, and practicing solving both addition and subtraction number stories.

Make My Design was a fun activity the children enjoyed during math explorations last Thursday.

Natalie tries to recreate Avery's design by listening and following the directions he gives her.

We had fun as we practiced telling time with our new BIG clock on Thursday!

Social Studies: We give a big thank you to John Schiaparelli for bringing his powerful telescope so we could observe the bald eagle nesting on the Florida Power field.

At the end of the week, the children will be bringing home books they created during our America unit. Celebrate all that your child learned and the hard work put into this wonderful project!

Kate transformed herself into the Statue of Liberty at home this weekend! 

Science: We are learning more about the state of Florida. This week we focus on state symbols such as the bird - mockingbird; tree - sabal palm; marine mammal - manatee; and flower - orange blossom. We'll also learn how Florida got its name as we learn a little about the discovery of Florida by Ponce de Leon. We'll enjoy using the ipads again as we continue our research to find more interesting information about our great state!

Other Important Reminders: 

Volunteers this Week: 

• Wednesday - Library checkout - 2:10 - Amber Ferrol and Kristen Danielson
• Thursday - Math game - 10:30 - Kim Gross
• Friday - Art - 1:00 - Mary Hind (Time Change today only!)
• Friday - Parent Reader - 2:15 - Charlene Hosseini

Celebrate the Arts Week will be April 15 - 19. We'll have several things going on that week including visiting musicians, artists, and an art walk to view the work of our own Shorecrest artists. On Monday, April 15, we have a field trip to the Dali Museum! Parents are welcome to meet us there, but will need to pay for your own admission at the door. The children's admission is covered by Shorecrest.The Arts Teach-in will be on Friday, April 19 from 8:10 - 11:00. Each class will have two visiting artists. The musical program performed by the students will begin at 11:00 that day with a picnic lunch to follow.  Artwork of students in EC - grade 4 will be on display. Bring a blanket and pack yourself a picnic lunch to enjoy with your child. You can order a sack lunch from Sage for your child if you prefer.  Lunch forms came home last week. Sage needs to know in advance how many sack lunches they will need to prepare. If you have not done so, please complete the form whether your child will need a school sack lunch or not. Please return it by Friday.  

The Upper Division musical during Celebrate the Arts week is "The Music Man". Show dates are April 18, 19, and 20 at 7:30 p.m. Box office hours are April 15 - 19 from 8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for children. Don't miss it! These are always amazing productions!

There is no school on Monday, April 22. 

On Sunday, April 28, Shorecrest is participating in an event called Feeding Children Everywhere. Volunteers are needed from the Shorecrest community to help pack food bags in the new Athletic Center. The event is It starts at 9:00 a.m. and ends at 2:00 p.m. It's another great way for the Shorecrest community to come together to make a difference in the lives of children.

Have a great week!
Susan