Dear Parents,

How are you all? I hope you had a great weekend. I am so excited to share the fun week we have ahead of us with you. Here is a quick summary of the week:

Book fair  - Please, come out and support the school from 4:00-8:00pm on 10/29/14. Please, remember to sign-up to donate a book to the class, then join us on wednesday at the book fair to purchase the book. I have emailed bookfair info to you all. Please, remember to take in your vouchers, so that the school can get a certain percentage of the proceeds. If you cannot make it to the book fair at Dana Park, vistit: BN.COM/bookfairs to support us online from 10/29/14 to 10/30/14 by entering Bookfair ID 11475894 at check out.

Read-a-thon Plan : The Read-a-thon will begin at 11:45am officially. Please, feel free to sign-up for 15min slots to come in and read to the whole class. Our seniors from Arete Prep will come in and read from 1:30 - 1:45. Mr. Gillingham will read from 12:45-12:55. Parents can fill up the other spots. We will have a break after the seniors read at 1:45-2:15 for snack. We welcome snack (chips, popcorn, 100% juice boxes, crackers and granola bars) donations from parents for the class. Please, expect two sign-up genius links from our classroom moms: Mrs. Lavell and Mrs. Everhart.

Read-a-thon costume proposals - students need to turn in a written proposal describing their costume, and the book it is from. We want to encourage excitement about the books in our curriculum! I will write comments and send them home if the costume idea needs to be tweaked. If your student has turned in a costume proposal and I do not send it back home by Tuesday, it is safe to assume that the proposal was approved! If your student is choosing not to dress up for the Read-a-thon they need to be in full uniform. Please, let me know if you have any questions, or need ideas on this topic

LANGUAGE ARTS  

SPALDING – We will continue with our spelling list this week. We have slowed down the spelling pace again because we have now started our second grade-spelling list. Please, review homework as they come home.

List 1: part, still, place, report, never, found, side, kind, life, here

  

List 2: car, word, every, under, most, made, said, says, say, work

List 3: our, more, when, from, form, wind, wind, print, air, fill

  

READING – READING STRATEGY: Our reading strategy this week will be making inferences and drawing conclusions. We will do a comprehension quiz on characterization this week. We will continue with chapters 3 & 4 in The Boxcar Children .

POETRY: Title: We will begin our recitals. Students will recite it individually by memory beginning this week.  Please, remind your scholars that we will grade their recitals.

SAYING: “Where there is a will there’s a way.”  We will appreciate it if you use it at home because children retain sayings when they engage in it through meaningful use.

           

GRAMMAR/VOCABULARY – Students will learn about adjectives, and we will continue to review contractions.

WRITING – As we work with Writing With Ease, students will continue to develop narration, dictation and copy work skills. As the narration and dictation homework goes home every week, we are asking that you help us pay attention to proof reading their work. I really want to suggest that you encourage your scholars to write a sentence every day, and have them look back and correct their mistakes. I really want to create awareness to writing this quarter.

LEVELED READERS

Please, encourage your scholars to take their readings seriously. Their reflection logs will go home for the second time this week. There are three pages of reflection and three books. They are expected to log in one book per page. Please, remind them to write the title of the text on the page they work on. We have seen some excellent writing skills thus far.

MATH

Math has been so much fun. We learned how to measure length in centimeters last week. We also measured the length of curved lines. Students learned how to use tape measure as well. In this new week, the focus will be on measuring in yards, feet, and inches.  Please, encourage your scholars to practice at home.

SCIENCE

We will finish our unit on four types of clouds: Cumulus, cirrus, stratus, and cumulonimbus clouds. A short information sheet on Clouds and the water cycle went home last week. It will come home again this week. Please, have them read it and share some facts from the reading with you.

HISTORY

        We will wrap-up our Chinese unit by learning about great inventions from China. We will also talk about the Chinese festival and do a general review of the unit.

VIRTUE

Perseverance

To maintain a steadfast purpose in a work in spite of difficulty, obstacles, or discouragement.

NEVER give up

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

"Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before." Herodotus 

Announcements

      Guided reading will continue on Tuesdays and Wednesday. On Tuesday, it will be 12:30 – 1:30pm (60mins) On Wednesdays; it will be 11:50am -12:50pm (60 mins). We will also have Math groups on Wednesday mornings starting this week at 8:05-9:05 am.

      Please, look out for the sign-up genius for all upcoming events this week.

Have a great week.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Toyin and Ms. Peterson