March 20, 2009

Upcoming Dates
* Friday, March 27th: Summer School Forms Due
This is a free program offered by our school district, and it is optional. If you are interested in having your child attend summer school, please complete and return the form.

* Wednesday, April 1st: March Book-It Reading Logs Due (last one)
Please remember to read everyday for 15 minutes with your child. After March, we will not have the Book-It reading logs anymore, but please continue to read on your own!

* Monday, April 13th to Friday, April 17th: Spring Break
No school! Enjoy your vacation!

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Dear Families,

Today the second trimester report cards are going home. Remember that ELD students have a separate report card for Language Arts (Reading/Writing/Speaking on pages 4 & 5). In order to exit ELD, students should be at level 4 (Early Advanced) or level 5 (Advanced) in all 3 areas of Language Arts by the end of the year. Also, students should be trying to get “4” in other areas such as math, social studies, and science, which means performing at grade level. All students are making great progress!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Julia
Poem of the Week: Wearing of the Green
Song of the Week: Spider or Insect
Kindness is … increasing the peace
Word Wall: afraid, any, bear, follow, most, tall, water, idea
Next Week’s Sharing: Weather Poem
(at least 4 sentences memorized and picture/object to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 7 We Can Work It Out – Week 2
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Monitor/Clarify and Sequence
• Word Families: words with oo (good)
• Sounds: oo sound and compound words
• Grammar: Proper Nouns for Places and Things

• Math: We have been working on measuring capacity this week using containers that are bigger or smaller. We have learned how to measure using cups, pints, and quarts. Please continue to practice this at home. In addition, we are working on numbers up to 20. Sometimes this means adding 3 numbers such as 3+3+6= or other times, just adding double facts 8+8= and double plus one facts 8+9= . Take a look at the work coming home this week and see if your child had a lot of mistakes on adding bigger numbers! If so, please practice practice practice!

• Writing: Along with our Mitten stories, we talked about Writer’s Workshop and the last step, the publishing step. A few students have published their first expository piece this week by writing in their best handwriting and illustrating their writings. The best part about publishing a piece is the Author’s Chair! Students get to read their stories to the class and sit in the teacher’s chair =)

• Circuit: For our weather circuit this week, we went to Mrs. Bachelor’s class and we talked about clouds and thunderstorms. She taught us about lightning and we made a stormy picture.

• Science: We have been talking about seasons and how the weather is changing from Winter to Spring. We also learned about St. Patrick’s Day and talked about rainbows.

• Social Studies: For our Peacebuilders and Kindness Journal lesson this week, we talked about increasing the peace around us. We learned different ways to increase more peace and sorted different examples into two groups: increased peace or decreased peace. Afterwards, students thought of their own examples of ways to increase peace.

• Computer: Since it was Kinako’s last week, we went to the computer lab and wrote letters to Kinako. We decorated our letters and put them altogether in a book for her to take to Japan.

• Music: Miss Rachel came to our class this week and she taught us how to do a partner dance called the Minuet! We danced several times to classical music. Also we learned a pirate song to sing.

Today is Kinako’s last day =( We are sad to see her leave but we are happy that she was part of our class this year. Good luck and have a safe move to Japan!