Chicken Dance Weekend

Upcoming Dates:

* Sunday, September 17th: Cupertino Jubilee Chicken Dance @ 12:20pm
Please plan on arriving at 12:00pm. It takes extra time to park and find the Chicken Dance location. Remember to also bring your chicken hats!

* Friday, September 29th: NO SCHOOL – Staff Learning Day

* Thursday, October 5th: Cupertino Library Field Trip from 1:15-2:30pm

* Friday, October 6th: Eaton’s 3rd annual Walk-a-Thon from 1:15-3:05pm

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September 15, 2006
Dear Families,

Our first week of homework and sharing went very well! Everyone passed their vocabulary tests! Also, today’s Friday Folder will have the sharing evaluation form, so you can see which areas your child can work on. Please remember to practice at home and eventually try to have them memorize all the words and sentences. Great start!

We have enough volunteers now! Thank you to Mrs. Nozaki and Mrs. Yokoyama for offering to volunteer on Friday afternoons. We are still hoping to receive more classroom donations for $125 to help pay for many upcoming field trips, activities, and assemblies. Please make your checks out to Eaton School. We are lucky to have supportive families!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Poem of the Week: A Circle of Friends
Song of the Week: Clap Your Name
Kindness is … drawing a picture for someone special.
Story of the Week: The Accidental Zucchini
Vocabulary of the Week: School Words 2
Word Wall Words: he, she, her, his, favorite, like (Make sure
your child can read and identify these words).
Next Week’s Sharing: Fall Poem (remember 4 lines memorized)

• Reading & Writing: We worked on our dictionary letters up to L this week. We also read Diary of a Worm and started our Weekend News journals. Please remember to review the weekend events with your child every Sunday night or Monday morning so that they have ideas to write about during journal time. Also, we continued Prince and Princess writing this week with Faith and Julia.

• Library: Remember to bring library books back to school on Friday so your child can check out a new book!

• Assembly: We had a Walk-a-Thon kickoff assembly. Students will be bringing home forms to try and raise money for our school.

• Kindness Journal: I have been hearing nice “Thank You” words all week long! Keep up these great manners. This week we drew pictures for someone special and we learned it’s nice to give others nice surprises.

• Language Arts: We started our literacy centers this week. You will see this packet (with a green cover sheet) almost every week in the Friday Folder. Your child receives 0, 1, 2, or 3 stars each week for finishing all the activities in centers. This is a growing process. Your child may only receive 1 or 2 stars in the beginning of the year, but I hope by the end of the year, they will receive 3 stars in all categories. I have included our literacy center rubric (how I evaluate work) in this newsletter so you can see how to work with your children on improving their scores. The most difficult center is usually the listening center. This week, we did the listening center together so the students understood how to write five sentences. The five sentences in listening center include:
o 1) This story was about _______. (character – who?)
o 2) In the beginning, _________.
o 3) In the middle, ___________.
o 4) In the end, ______________.
o 5) _____________________. (Conclusion - Did you like the story? What was the best part? What do you think?)

• Math: We have finished Chapter 1! We started looking at Chapter 2, which is on subtraction facts. Word problems are tricky for students, and we are learning “magic words” like: in all, altogether, and join all mean PLUS. We still are completing the math word problems in our workbooks together to practice reading and solving problems.

• Circuits: We had our first circuit this week. Students stayed with me and we read a story called The Way I Feel. We explored our feelings and wrote about why we have different feelings.

• Computer Lab: We explored KidPix this week by drawing pictures using the different tools: pencils, markers, stamps, paint bucket, etc. We are also learning how to save our work in our own folders.

• Buddies: We saw our buddies today and we did an activity called With my Hands. We talked about how we help others with our hands.

• Art: We had our first visit with the art teacher, Mrs. Blakeslee this week! She taught us about our primary colors.

• Music: We also had our first visit with our music teacher, Mrs. More! We used instruments and sung high and low songs.

I hope all of you have a wonderful weekend! I will be going on Sunday to the Chicken Dance so I will see you there! We have been practicing with all the other first graders and it should be fun! Happy Friday!
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Literacy Centers Rubric

* Listening Center
3 stars = colored picture AND 5 or more sentences
2 stars = picture and/or 2-4 sentences OR no picture and 5 or more sentences
1 star = no picture and/or 1 sentence or less OR picture and no sentences
0 = no picture or words

Poetry Center
3 stars = 5 or less mistakes (handwriting)
2 stars = more than 5 mistakes (handwriting)
1 star = skipped 1-2 lines or very messy overall
0 = not finished 5 or more lines

Spelling Center
3 stars = ABC and spelling correct, more than 3 sentences
2 stars = ABC or spelling mistakes, OR less than 3 sentences on the back
1 star = ABC or spelling mistakes, and incomplete in Column 3 or no sentences
0 = Column 2 & 3 not finished

Vocabulary Center
3 stars = No mistakes on vocabulary worksheet, Scholastic News and Dictionary words done
2 stars = spelling/handwriting mistakes on vocabulary sheet OR dictionary or Scholastic News not done
1 star = missing 1-2 words in vocab, OR did not do Scholastic News and Dictionary
0 = not finished 8 or more words and did not do Scholastic News/Dictionary