Friday, September 18, 2009

Newsletter: Week 4

Friday, September 18, 2009
Miss Wagenaar
Reminders/Notices:
•Please send an apple of any shape, size, or color to school with your child by Thursday, September 24th. We will be studying apples next week, we will use those apples to sort, graph, and taste.
•There is no school for students on Monday September 21st.
•Next Friday is our Annual Walk-A-Thon and Silent Auction. Please ensure that your child’s permission slip has been turned in if they will be participating after school. The Silent Auction is our PTA’s main fundraiser, helping to provide money for school-wide field trips. Miss Casellini and myself offer a pizza/movie date for the two top bidders. Please check it out, and bid if you are interested!
•I have sent out notifications with date and time of your Goal Setting Conferences. Please return the bottom half (or email) indicating your availability during your scheduled time. I look forward to having an opportunity to meet with each of you to discuss your children and answer questions about an overview of our school year.
•Parent Volunteers will be invited into our classroom beginning this week. If you are a regular, weekly scheduled volunteer please make sure that you check in through the office and put on your badge before entering campus. I look forward to having parents join our classroom community and thank you for your willingness to help. We still do not have a volunteer for Computer Lab, so please let me know if anyone is available for Tuesday from 12:50-1:20.
•I have sent home our classroom Roster. Please check it over and inform me of any errors or changes so that I can update everyone else.

This Week:
Citizenship Award Winner: Lindsay Padden (congratulations Lindsay!!)
In Writer’s Workshop this week we generated a list of “What Writers Write About”, decorated covers for our sourcebooks and began preparing our alphabet charts that will be used as we begin to spell things phonetically.
We continued to focus on routines and procedures in Reader’s Workshop this week. We practiced Private Reading and practiced reading the pictures (which I encourage for our class of emerging readers)
Students have begun sorting for Math, using our sorting bags – which contain a variety of objects from batteries to shells and beads.
We jumped into our Foss Science unit about animals by two. I introduced our four goldfish and we named them: Roxie, Rosie, Goldie and Sharkie.
In Social Studies we continued to talk about Rules, focusing especially on sharing and taking turns.
This week’s pocket chart was “I Am a Pirate” a book that coordinates color with items of clothing that a pirate is wearing. After practicing all week, the children got their own “I Am a Pirate” to color correspondingly.
We met our 3rd grade reading buddies from Mr. Wichmann’s class. Together the students completed a questionnaire to learn about each other.
We celebrated International Talk Like a Pirate Day by eating Pirates Booty, making pirate hats, and learning phrases like “Ahoy”, “Walk the Plank” and “Shiver Me Timbers”!

Next Week:
We will be studying apples. Johnny Appleseed’s birthday is on September 26th, so we will be talking about him as an example of people in history who were good citizens. We will be using the theme of apples over the next two weeks across many of our curriculum areas.
We will continue our study of animals, introducing guppies to compare with our goldfish.
We will be doing Reader’s and Writer’s Workshops next week. In Reader’s workshop we will introduce procedures for Partner Reading. In Writer’s Workshop students will be prompted to write a story about a time that they fell down or got injured (I choose this as a first topic since everyone – myself included – has a memorable story about sustaining an injury).

Questions to ask your child
1.What parts do a fish have? (fins, gills, eyes, mouth, tail)
2.Brainstorm a “falling down” story with your child. Ask them to tell the story to you, including details. This will prepare them to share their story in class, both orally and in picture/words.
3.Can you show me the front cover, back cover, and spine of the book?
4.Can you sort these items for me?

A few items needed
I am looking to grow our sorting bags in my classroom. If you have any of the following items laying around your house that you would donate to our classroom, please send in with your child. I would greatly appreciate any donations.

Bread tags
Shells
Old keys
Container lids
Tile pieces
Beads
Buttons
Corks
Shaped erasers
Metal washers from screws

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