Letter to the President

We have written letters to the president. Please send a stamp with your child to class on Monday. If you have any extras please feel free to send them along as people are bound to not remember them. The kids will be using their addresses on the envelopes so that they can get some mail to their own address. Please feel free to send the letter into class to have your child share with everyone.

Writing

So your child has been assigned writing for homework. I have chunked it so that they are not faced with the daunting task of writing for more then a small period of time each day. Kids burn out of writing very easily. For some kids it really helps for them to dictate what they are thinking or to write notes about what they can write. For others drawing pictures is how the pre-write. Some kids just like to jump in and start writing. How they do it is totally up to them.

Typically in any writing assignment I am looking for these eight qualities.
Title
Idea
Organization
Voice
Word Choice
Sentence Fluency
Conventions
Next Step

In this piece because it is so structured I am looking for the following:
Organization
sentence fluency
word choice
conventions
neatness

I hope this helps.Please don't hesitate to contact me with questions. There is no math log, reading log, or poem this week.

Volunteers Needed

On December 7th we are learning about Hanukkah. If you are intereseted in coming in and making potato pancakes for the class please let me know. We will have our celebration around 9:30 am, but volunteers can come at 9:00. I only need one or two parents at the most for this.

On December 14th we'll be making holiday crafts. We will need four volunteers to man glue guns for the snowmen. If you can come help make snowmen and other holiday crafts please let me know ASAP. We will be working from 2:00 on. Volunteers should plan on arriving by 1:45pm.
E-mail if you are interested!

Optional Thanksgiving Work

I sent home an optional language arts packet in the Friday Folder. This DOES NOT need to be turned in and it is up to you if you choose to do it. Your child should read the story and then do the packet that follows. This is your choice if you and your student would like to do this work. I always try to provide work over the break for those families that would like it. I have also sent home the homework for the week after break. The first log is not checked until Tuesday as usual.

The fluency log will be due on Friday, November 30. I did not mark this on the homework but I did put it in upcoming events on the BLOG.

Checking In

It was great seeing all of you at conferences. Many of you mentioned wanting to move on from math facts in the nightly math practice. I encourage all of you to do so. We are going to be working on our second chapter of money when we return from Thanksgiving Break and after that we will move on to time. Time is a concept that many of the kids won't master until the end of the year. That is fine. We will keep practicing throughout the year on time and money. They are conepts that take a while to master and they will get it in time. Just keep practicing.

We are still working on quotation marks, underlining, and commas. We have worked on commas in a list, commas at the begining and end of a letter, commas in a date, underlining a book title, underlining a movie title, using quotes around the title of a story, and quotes in a conversation. Please look over these papers as they come home in the Friday folder. If you are practicing writing at home please incorporate some of these in your writing practice.

I hope you all have a wonderfully relaxing break. Enjoy the time off! I will be out on the Monday and Tuesday when we return. I will be at a conference on differentiation. I will have lots of great insight to share when I return.

Happy Thanksgiving

Halloween Link

Pumpkin Day Link

Lack of Updates

I am having trouble getting onto the blog from school. I will update the blog with more pictures of your beautiful children as soon as I can. I have really enjoyed meeting with so many of you these last few days. If you find your schedule changes and you have to cancel a conference please leave a message with the office. I don't always get a chance to check my voice mail or e-mail during conferences. Thanks!

The kids have been great especially with the shortened days. We have moved into money. Please work on making amounts of money with your child using various types of coins. We worked on making a dollar today with one type of coin and also with many kinds of coins.

Enjoy the three day weekend!

Halloween

We had a wonderful Halloween parade and party. Thank you to everyone who made it a huge success!