Homework for the week of November 26th

Math	Complete attached Math Expressions pages: 4-12 (Homework- front and Remembering - back)  7-11 (Homework- front and Targeted Practice - back)
Wilson Fundations	Complete the Wilson Fundations sheet.  We have been working with the “baseword and suffix /s/.” Read the directions and complete the sheet. We never tap out a suffix. We tap out the baseword, then blend it once, then blend it a second time with the suffix added to it. *Please make sure this sheet is turned in on Friday with all of the other homework.
Reading	Read for at least 10 minutes each night.  Write the title on this sheet. Monday________________________________ Tuesday_______________________________ Wednesday _____________________________ Thursday ________________________________
Math Masters and Word Lists	Keep working on both of these. This is our last week of school.  I will give students one more shot with both of these. Please make sure your child can read the works fluently, without hesitation, and can count by 2 without any pauses.  Keep up the great work!

Newsletter volume 18

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! This week we will continue learning how to tell time on the hour and the half-hour. We will write about the Thanksgiving holiday and focus on comprehension and fluency in reading. We will also be having many assessments in math, reading, and writing to determine where we are with meeting our benchmarks. Report cards will go home on Friday!

Tomorrow our 4^th and 5^th grade friends on Tracks 1 and 3 will perform their winter musical “The Big Chill” at 2:45 and 6:30.  Come join us in supporting their hard work and enjoy some holiday spirit!

We need large squirt bottles of hand sanitizer! We are trying to keep the cold germs away and are on our last bottle! ThanksJ.

Friday November 30^th is TRACK OUT day, but it is NOT an early release day! I would like to have a little “holiday celebration” Friday afternoon at 3:00. Please let me know if you would like to contribute to the fun! Remember, all food items must be store bought.

Important Information:

-       Field Trip Info- I am still missing quite a few permission slips and money for our Field Trips. If you need another form, please let me know and I can get that to you as soon as possible.

-       Volunteers for Friday- We are going to be learning about the holidays Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Las Posadas, and Christmas. We will be reading books about these holidays throughout the week and will be making a craft for each of these holidays on Friday. I will send out a Sign Up Genius this afternoon asking for volunteers. Thanks!

Special visit from Lieutenant Chris Jackson

 Lieutenant Jackson explaining the different medals he has earned.

 Drawing a picture of his submarine on the Smartboard for us.

 The whole class and Lieutenant Jackson!

Listening so closely and asking some awesome questions!

Newsletter volume 17

In writing, we continued to work on persuasive letter writing. We are becoming really good at convincing people to feel the same way we do! We need to continue to make sure we are putting capitals at beginning of sentences, periods after complete thoughts, and checking over our work to make sure words are not missing and the sentence makes sense.

In math, we started working on telling time. So far, we have really focused on the difference between an analog and digital clock. This week, we will go into more depth about telling time to the hour and half hour.

Special guest- On Friday we had a special guest come to our classroom. We had Lieutenant Chris Jackson visit our classroom from the U.S. Navy. He is stationed in Saratoga Springs, New York. He told the class about living on a submarine and told us all about his medals. The kids were great listeners and had some awesome questions to ask Lieutenant Jackson.

Important Information:

-    Field Trip Info- Please make sure you are returning the permission slip and the payment of $20.50 as soon as possible. The lunch order form will not be needed for the first field trip since it will be at school, so lunch will only need to be ordered for our 2^nd field trip that is in March. We will have lunch as normal for the January trip. Thanks!

-    Homework for the week- The only official homework is disguising Tom the Turkey and the story that goes along with him. However, it is a good idea to continue working on word lists, Math Masters, and reading every night, since the quarter ends in 7 school days!

Newsletter volume 16

 In writing, we worked on writing a persuasive writing piece about being elected “Classroom President.”  Since last Tuesday was Election Day, we talked a lot about responsibilities that a person has when they are elected into a position. So that gave us the idea to write a persuasive letter “If I was Classroom President.”  The students did a wonderful job and some of them were very creative about things they would do if elected.  They ranged from no school on Fridays to school on Saturdays and Sundays, to everyone getting on green everyday to everyday being pajama day. It was a very close vote, but our classroom president for 2012-2013 is ……….Jacob McLamb!

 In reading, we did a KWL chart about Bats. We first talked about our schema, what we already know and then came up with questions that we hoped to find out. We read lots of informational text and added lots of new information to our schema.

 In math, we worked on word problems that had 3 or more addends, or partners. Sometimes, we just add up all of the numbers together to find the total. Other times we have adding and subtracting. It’s so important to read the word problem carefully to see if it is addition only, only subtraction, or we need to add and subtract.

In Wilson Fundations, we continued working on reading and tapping out words that have the suffix /s/. We do not tap out the suffix, since sometimes it makes the /s/ sound and other times it makes the /z/ sound. We have been word detectives where we have been finding words that have the suffix /s/ ending.

Veteran’s Day- With our non-fiction study, we found out a lot of great information about Veteran’s Day. We talked about how the holiday came to be, found out it used to be called Armistice Day, talked about WW1 and WW2 and compared these two wars, but most importantly talked about why we celebrate this very special day every November 11^th at 11:00. 

Important Information:

-Field Trip Info- Please make sure you are returning the permission slip and the payment of $20.50 as soon as possible. The lunch order form will not be needed for the first field trip since it will be at school, so lunch will only need to be ordered for our 2^nd field trip that is in March. We will have lunch as normal for the January trip. Thanks!

- Assessments- Make sure you and your child are working on Word List, Math Masters, reading each night, math homework, and writing.  We are coming to the final days in our 2^nd quarter and assessments will be starting very shortly.  I will be sending home another Track Out Packet, during our month long Track Out.

Homework for the week of November 13th

Math	Complete attached Math Expressions pages:  4-14 (Homework- front and Remembering- back) 4- 15  (Homework- front and Targeted Practice - back)
Spelling	Sight Words this Week: there      what      she     just    make *As the year progresses, we will be creating a list of sight word activities that your child can choose from each week. Your child needs to choose 2 of the 6 activities listed.  In addition, they should also read the sight words to a parent each night. Pick 2 of the choices below: *Write each sight word 3x each. *Use each sight word in a sentence. *Rainbow write your words in 2 colors for each word. *Write your sight words in ABC order. *Write each word neatly. Trace over all the vowels in each word with a blue crayon. *Write a story and use each of your sight words. Underline each word as you use it in the story.
Reading	Read for at least 10 minutes each night.  Write the title on this sheet. Tuesday_______________________________ Wednesday _____________________________ Thursday ________________________________
Turkey Disguise	See the ½ sheet coming home about the “Thanksgiving Homework”. Tom the Turkey needs a disguise so he won’t get eaten for Thanksgiving dinner. Tom is due, with his writing, by Wednesday, November 21st.

Tom the Turkey homework

It is time to have fun creating a very unusual bird. As a family, disguise Tom Turkey so that he won’t be eaten for Thanksgiving!  You may choose to dress your turkey as a doctor, a teacher, a firefighter, an astronaut, a ballerina, etc. Be creative and use any materials that you already have at home. Every member of the family is welcome to help!

Cut out the attached turkey and mount it on cardboard or another heavy material. Make it original and have fun!!!!

After the family finishes creating the turkey, have your child write about Tom. How will he hide so that he doesn’t get eaten? Please stress to them the importance of using correct capitalization and punctuation.

Turkey homework is due on Wednesday, November 21^st but if you finish it earlier you may send it in.  When your Tom Turkey is incognito he can “hide out” in our classroom! 

Happy turkey dressing!

Newsletter volume 15

      In writing, we continued working on persuasive letter writing. We read lots of books where students were trying to persuade people to feel a certain way like the books “My Teacher for President” and “I Wanna Iguana” by Karen Kaufman Orloff.  We continued to brainstorm things that we would change around school and started talking about the correct letter format. We will continue working on this this week.

     In reading, we focused on retelling the story in order. For books that have lots of details, we worked on using the book to go back and use it as a resource. We practice retelling the correct sequence of events using books like “The little old lady who wasn’t afraid of anything” and “There was an old lady who swallowed some leaves.” Since these books have lots of events, we would pause after every few pages and review the correct sequence of events.

     In math, we were working on adding 2 decade numbers together like 30+40, where we would do 3 ten sticks, then add 4 more ten sticks and count by 10’s to give us 70. Then we would add 3+4, where we would just use ones to add 3 ones plus 4 ones to give us 7. Then we worked on adding 30+4 where we would need 3 ten sticks for 30 and then 4 ones to give us 10, 20, 30, 31, 32, 33, and finally 34.

In Wilson Fundations, we have started working with words that have the suffix /s/. This is just a fancy way of saying a word is plural, meaning it has more than 1. To mark up with word, we would underline the baseword and circle the suffix /s/. For example, if we had the word logs, we would underline log and then circle the s. When we tap this word out, we never tap out the suffix, because sometimes it can have the /s/ sound and others have the /z/ sound.  So to tap out the word logs, we would say /l/, /o/, /g/ and blend it together to say log, then logs.

Important Information:

-      Election Day- Tomorrow will be a two hour delay. That means that the first bell where students can enter the school will be 10:45 and the tardy bell rings at 11:15. Just for tomorrow, our lunch will be from 11:55 to 12:25. Students in the school will also be able to vote for president tomorrow. They will circle their choice. We will go to the media center at 11:15 to vote, so it’s important to get here on time. Breakfast will not be served, since it will be time for lunches to start as soon as the bell rings.

-      Field Trip Information- Today a packet came home about our 2 field trips for the school year. We will have our first trip, Science Fun for Everyone, on Thursday, January 10^th. This field trip will take place at school. Our second field trip will be at Poe Health Center and will on Wednesday, March 27^th. The total for both field trips is $20.50. Money can be turned in starting tomorrow. Please bring exact change or write a check out to Banks Road Elementary School. There is also an option for online payment. There is a sheet that came home in the packet giving more information about this.

-      Book-It! - Congrats to all of the students who read for at least 45 minutes each week for a total of at least 180 minutes for the month. The following students got their Book-It! certificate for the month on October: Dylan, Hayden, Carson, Seth, Bryson, Angelina, Kaitlyn, Daniela, Jeremy, Austin, Lily, Jeremiah, and Alexis. Way to go! November Book-It! came home last week and will be due on Friday, November 30^th. Our goal is again going to be 45 minutes a week.

-      Coats for outside- It looks like Fall is finally here to stay. We will continue to go outside to recess as the weather gets cooler. Please make sure your child is coming to school with coats, gloves, scarves, hats, etc. There have been lots of bugs and germs going around and I don’t want anyone to get sick. Thanks for your help with this!

Homework for the week of November 5th

Math	Complete attached Math Expressions pages: 4-11 (Homework- front and Targeted Practice - back) 5-7 (Homework- front and Targeted Practice - back)
Spelling	Sight Words this Week: were      her       put      had     here *As the year progresses, we will be creating a list of sight word activities that your child can choose from each week. Your child needs to choose 2 of the 6 activities listed.  In addition, they should also read the sight words to a parent each night. Pick 2 of the choices below: *Write each sight word 3x each. *Use each sight word in a sentence. *Rainbow write your words in 2 colors for each word. *Write your sight words in ABC order. *Write each word neatly. Trace over all the vowels in each word with a blue crayon. *Write a story and use each of your sight words. Underline each word as you use it in the story.
Reading	Read your “Book in a Bag” to Mom or Dad and parents complete the Parent Participation Sheet.  Take time to really work through the questions with your child.  Eventually they will be able to answer most of the questions without much prompting.  Your child should continue to read their “Book in a Bag” several times throughout the week. Please make sure the “Parent Participation sheet” is filled out and returned on Friday, with the book.
Wilson Fundations	Complete the Wilson Fundations sheet.  We have been working with the “glued sounds /an/ and /am/. Read the directions and complete the sheet. *Please make sure this sheet is turned in on Friday with all of the other homework.

Newsletter volume 14

In writing, we started working on persuasive letter writing. We first shared our schema, which is what we already know. Which we found out, wasn’t a whole lot. Then we read the book “I Wanna New Room” by Karen Kaufman Orloff.  In the book, Alex, the little boy, was trying to convince his parents that he needed a new room by writing persuasive letters to them. Have your child tell you what Alex finally got and how he felt. Then we started brainstorming ideas that we could change for the school, community, and your family.

     In reading, we really focused on making a connection to our lives after we have read a book.  For example, we read the book “Bear Feels Sick.” I made the connection to my life, when I had the chicken pox, my brother took care of me.  Then when I was feeling better, my brother then got the chicken pox, just like in the book when Bear was sick and all of his friends took care of him.  Then when he was better, all of his friends were then sick. It’s also a great idea for students to make a connection to another story.

     In math, we are continuing to work with place value with 10’s and 1’s, but now we are incorporating it into dimes and pennies. We know that if we have the number 37, we can show that by drawing 3 circles and writing 10 in the middle for 3 dimes and then draw 7 circles and put a 1 in the middle to represent 7 pennies. So we would count 10, 20, 30 cents, then 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, and finally 37 cents.

 In Wilson Fundations, we learned two more glued sounds, /an/ and /am/. We tap these 2 letters together to make one sound. For example, if we have the word, “ham”, we would tap out the beginning sound /h/ with our thumb and pointer finger and /am/ would be tapped together with our middle and ring finger to make a wolfpack symbol. It is 3 letters, but we only tap out 2 sounds. Have your child show you how to tap out with word.

Important Information:

-        Fall Festival- Thank you everyone who donated items for our pet baskets. I might be biased, but I think we had the best 2 baskets out of all of them! We haven’t heard the total amount how much was raised for our “Spoiled Dog and Spoiled Cat” baskets, but I know it’s going to be a lot for the grade level! Thank you again so much! We had a great turn out with 13 students and their families coming out and having a great time at the Fall Festival!

-        Scholastic Book Order- This Thursday the November and December Scholastic magazines will be coming home. There are so many great books and deals. I have the due date coming up quickly so we can make sure the items come in before we track out on the 30^th. Remember if you order on-line, you get a coupon for a free $5.00 book. Our online code is: G229M. Orders will be due on Thursday, November 15^th.

Homework for the week of October 29th

Math	Complete attached Math Expressions pages: 4-10 (Homework- front and Remembering - back) 5-2 (Homework- front and Remembering - back)
Spelling	Sight Words this Week:                                                                                              shell      lick      thick      fuss     fall *As the year progresses, we will be creating a list of sight word activities that your child can choose from each week. Your child needs to choose 2 of the 6 activities listed.  In addition, they should also read the sight words to a parent each night. Pick 2 of the choices below: *Write each sight word 3x each. *Use each sight word in a sentence. *Rainbow write your words in 2 colors for each word. *Write your sight words in ABC order. *Write each word neatly. Trace over all the vowels in each word with a blue crayon. *Write a story and use each of your sight words. Underline each word as you use it in the story.
Reading	Read your “Book in a Bag” to Mom or Dad and parents complete the Parent Participation Sheet.  Take time to really work through the questions with your child.  Eventually they will be able to answer most of the questions without much prompting.  Your child should continue to read their “Book in a Bag” several times throughout the week. Please make sure the “Parent Participation sheet” is filled out and returned on Friday, with the book.
Wilson Fundations	Complete the Wilson Fundations sheet.  This sheet is a review of digraphs. *Please make sure this sheet is turned in on Friday with all of the other homework.

Newsletter for October 22nd

   In writing, we finished up the unit on Small Moments.  We will next be entering into persuasive letter writing!

  In math, we are continuing to work on grouping numbers into 10’s and then left over ones.  In class, we have dry erase boards that have a number path of 1 to 100 going around the outside of the board. We have worked with this number path, making 10 sticks and doing dots for left over 1’s.  For example, with the number 52, we could make a 10 stick through 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, and a final one through 41-50.  Then we would do 2 extra dots for 51 and 52.  We could then write a number sentence 50+2=52.  This is just another cool way we have been working on showing groups of 10.

    In Wilson Fundations, we continued working with the double bonus letters: f, l, s, and sometimes z. These letters are found at the end of the quadrant, which helps us to remember that we need to double it up. We do not sound out of tap out the double bonus letter. We assessed this unit today and will start a new unit tomorrow.

Important Information:

- JDRF Walk- Our school goal was to raise $5,000.00. From just tracks 1 and 3 we raised $6,364.00!!!! That is amazing!!!! Way to go!!!

- Box Tops- Our class is in the lead for the contest!!!!! Keep on cutting out the little rectangles and turn them in! I think the contest runs through the end of the month. Every Box Top turned in is 10 cents for our school.

- Items for the Pet Basket- Thank you so much for all if the items that were donated for the track 1 pet basket. Mrs. Rodgers and I put all of our stuff together this morning, and we have enough for 2 baskets! We have some really awesome things in there! Make sure you find our baskets are the Fall Festival and purchase tickets to try to win it. A special thank you goes out to Mrs. Axman for putting the baskets together!!!

Homework for the week of October 22nd

Math	Complete attached Math Expressions pages: 4-4 (Homework- front and Remembering - back) 4-7 (Homework- front and Targeted Practice - back)
Spelling	Sight Words this Week:                                                                                              from      or       have      eat     got *As the year progresses, we will be creating a list of sight word activities that your child can choose from each week. Your child needs to choose 2 of the 6 activities listed.  In addition, they should also read the sight words to a parent each night. Pick 2 of the choices below: *Write each sight word 3x each. *Use each sight word in a sentence. *Rainbow write your words in 2 colors for each word. *Write your sight words in ABC order. *Write each word neatly. Trace over all the vowels in each word with a blue crayon. *Write a story and use each of your sight words. Underline each word as you use it in the story.
Reading	Read your “Book in a Bag” to Mom or Dad and parents complete the Parent Participation Sheet.  Take time to really work through the questions with your child.  Eventually they will be able to answer most of the questions without much prompting.  Your child should continue to read their “Book in a Bag” several times throughout the week. Please make sure the “Parent Participation sheet” is filled out and returned on Friday, with the book.
Wilson Fundations	Complete the Wilson Fundations sheet.  We have been working with “Double Bonus Letters.” They are f, l, s, and sometimes z. Read the directions and complete the sheet. *Please make sure this sheet is turned in on Friday with all of the other homework.

Newsletter for October 15th

In Reading, we focused on the reading “non-fiction or informational” text. This type of text is real information and the purpose of the book is so we can learn more information about that topic. We read a lot of informational text about Christopher Columbus and about Fire Safety. We worked on filling out KWL charts. The K stands for what we already know or our “schema”. The W stands for what do we want to know. And the L gets filled in after we have completed our research and stands for things that we learned.

   In math, we started a new unit working the counting by 10’s and adding on the extra ones.  We have been working on making 10 sticks, which is doing a straight line for each ten and then drawing circles for the ones place.  For example if we had the number 37, we would do 3 ten sticks (straight lines) and then do 5 circles on top and 2 underneath it.  We do 5 and 2, so we can quickly add 5+2 to give us 7.  Doing the ten stick saves a lot of time, so we don’t have to count up 10 each time, but instead can count by ten.

    In Wilson Fundations, we have been working on double bonus letters and the glued sound /all/. With the double bonus letters, these are letters that we double and these letters come at the end of each quadrant. They are f, l, s, and sometimes z. We do not tap out this sound, but we do have to double it up when a short vowel comes before that letter. For example, if we had the word mess, we would only tap out /m/, /e/, and the first /s/. For the glued sounds, these are sounds that we tap out together. For example, if we had the word fall, it would only have two sounds to tap out /f/ and then /all/. So when we tap out a glued sound, it looks like a wolf pack with the middle and ring finger together to tap out.

    Fire Safety- Last week we talked a lot about Fire Safety, since it was Fire Safety week.  We read several books about Fire Fighters and how Fire Fighters and safety requirements have changed from hundreds of years ago to now.  Have your child share some of the things they learned last week.

Important Information:

-          JDRF Walk- We will walk tomorrow, the 16^th, from 9:20 to 9:50. All money collected will be due tomorrow. Thanks!

-          Scholastic Book Order- If you are interested, check and order form will be due to me by Friday, October 19^th. If you would like to order online, our class activation code is: G229M.  You can access that at www.scholastic.com/bookclubs.

-          Items for the Pet Basket- All items that are being collected for the Pet Basket for the Fall Festival are due this Friday, the 19^th. It can be any item for any animal.