100th Day of School- Monday

On Monday we will celebrate the 100th day of school with curriculum-based activities and a trip to the Dollar Store (each day of school we have been adding pennies to a chart- with our 100 pennies we will go shopping). If your child requires a booster or carseat please leave it with them Monday morning.

January- In the Know

I hope that everyone had a fun and restful holiday, and that your child is ready to return to school relaxed and ready to learn! Our theme for January is “house and home.” We will explore how landscape and climate have an effect on the kinds of structures used for shelter. Fundations group A is working on building phonemic awareness by blending, segmenting and manipulating sounds in CVC words. Group B will be introduced to “glued” sounds ang, ing, ong, ung, ank, ink, onk & unk. Both groups are working on reading with accuracy and prosody. The concepts of force and motion will be introduced in STEM, and students will discover the components of a simple machine through hands-on activities. The 100^th day of school is later this month; we will celebrate by collecting our 100 pennies and going to the Dollar Store!

We will also complete middle of year assessments for both ELA and mathematics this month, so homework will be a little lighter this week and next. 

We partnered with the high school before the break. Each of our students was partnered with a high school student who read to them. We plan on doing this more often- next time our students will read the class book to the high schoolers. The following are a few snapshots: 

  

 

Class Christmas Party and Author's Tea Tomorrow!

The time has finally come for us to unveil our class book, The ABCs of Christmas! Our class has worked very hard on this and I know they are excited to share what they have done with you. We call it an author's tea because we used to have the class recite the book and we would have refreshments afterwards. However, I know it is easier for parents if school events are combined, ergo, our class Christmas party is immediately after the recitation of the book.
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 Congratulations are in order for Ethan who won the school sweater competition! Way to go, Ethan!

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Important dates

• 12/15 @1:00 Author's Tea / Class Party
• 12/18- Class community project (Lunch for the fire department)
• 12/19 early release, Christmas break
• 1/3/18- back to school

Flat Stanley Project

Our class is participating in a school-wide Flat Stanley project.  Today in the Tuesday folders you will find fliers about the project. We are asking all of the students to take Stanley with them to an interesting place/person, or mail Stanley to an interesting place/person and take a picture of Stanley in that place or with that person.

The packet has a travel journal in which to describe Stanley's travels. The objective of this project is for students to gain a better understanding of various communities and people that they may not have known about, or they only knew a little about.

We will have a school-wide presentation about the project later in the year. If you have any questions about the project please let me know. The following is a link to a site about the project:
http://flatstanleyproject.com

Dyslexic discussion on NPR

For those who are able to listen, 1A on NPR will host a discussion about Dyslexia and services in school at 11:00. https://the1a.org/shows/2017-12-06/when-dyslexic-students-are-denied-in-school

Also, we will go to the library tomorrow so please bring back any library books that need to be returned as well as car/booster seats. A huge thank you to Mr. Krabel for coming to our class yesterday to talk about Christmas traditions in Germany- it was so interesting, and the cookies were great!

December- In the Know

December is always a busy month for Primary. Our class will attend the showing of “A Christmas Carol” on the 14^th and the début of our class book and author’s tea is scheduled for the 15^th at 1:00. I know the kids are very excited to share their hard work with you! Immediately after the author’s tea we will celebrate the season with our class Christmas party hosted by Cassie Camacho. We hope everyone will be able to join us for both of special these events. December 18th will be a special "fun" day for our class. We will take a break from our normal routine to learn some new games, share stories and focus on Responsive Classroom activities. The following day (12/19) is a non-academic early release day. Students are encouraged to wear pajamas because they will not go to class on this day, rather they will have a visit from Santa and join the rest of the school for some fun and games before leaving for Christmas vacation. 

 December is a fun month, but it's also a short month for academics which means we have a lot to cover academically and every minute counts! In ELA we are writing about gifts and gift-givers, reading and spelling words with “glued” sounds and exploring how Christmas is celebrated around the world. Students are exploring rock properties and transitioning from plant lifecycles to soil and rock weathering in STEM. We are excited to explore rocks hands-on by mining, panning and sifting sand, gems and silt.

In the Know- November

For homework this week, some students have a dictation page in their packet. This is an opportunity for you to dictate sounds/words/sentences to your child, and have them show you how to "tap out words" and "spell-check tap" once they have written words. They can also explain the proof-reading technique we learned in class for writing sentences.

Sounds- dictate any consonant or short vowel sound. *avoid the schwa
Words- mop, rash, rock, fix, chip
Sentence- The fox is in the pen with the hen.

Reminders:

• Our field trip to the library will be on Thursday (11/16) so please bring any books that need to be retuned. 
• Miss Hines and I will be at an education workshop on Friday (11/17), so our class will join the lower school who is attending a performance of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the High Point Little Theater. 
• If possible, it would be helpful to leave any car/booster seats at school Thursday and Friday.  
• I will be out Monday and Tuesday of next week. Mrs. Hagen will be my substitute, and students will not have a homework packet for those days, but I highly recommend that students still read (or be read to) for 20 minutes nightly. I think Miss. Hines is planning something special for Tuesday! 
• School is closed November 22-26 for Thanksgiving. 
• Our class Christmas party/author's tea will be Friday 12/15. We will start with our author's tea (presentation of published Student Treasures class book) at 1:00, followed by the class party at 1:30. A huge thank you to Cassie Camacho for agreeing to plan this for us! 
• 12/19- half day and visit from Santa Claus!