Weekly Overview - March 28-30

HERE'S WHAT'S HAPPENING IN ROOM 14...MARCH 28-30

Dear Parents:

We are very busy because of our shortened instruction time. Please help your child to complete and return his/her edited and improved narrative on Thursday. This project receives 3 homework points (one full day’s worth).

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Printing/phonograms: We will have a quiz on Wednesday.

Reading: We will start off with reading two folktales and then we will do our listening comprehension story and test. We begin a new theme next week – We Can Do It! Our for next week is “Two Greedy Bears”, a humorous story about two whiny, greedy bears that learn the value of sharing the hard way! Please encourage daily reading with the Take-Home books. Don't forget to read to your child, too.

English:  We will review skills through D.O.L. We will take a quiz on Thursday.

Spelling: There is no spelling this week because of the short week. Next week we will begin having 10 sentences!

MATH: We continue to work on counting coin amounts and identifying types of coins to make a certain total. Many students are having trouble counting from the quarter to the dime and keeping that ten’s pattern counting going. This will take some extra work at home since we have had a reduction in our class time due to furlough days. There will be a quiz on Thursday, but it will not include quarters.

SCIENCE: We will spend our time working on our polar bear reports. Next week we will continue with our “Solids and Liquids” topic.

COMPUTER LAB: Helpers-you are a critical part of what we do for the next month as we start word-processing our animal stories!

********************SPECIAL NOTES******************

This Friday: No school – MAC scoring day for teachers

April 9-13 – Spring Break

April 17 – PTA General Association meeting – 8:45 am and Pastries for Parents

Due to the furlough days, there will be no progress reports this week. Please look through your child’s work packet and note successes and challenges

Sincerely,

 Mrs. Pierce

Weekly Overview - March 19-23

HERE'S WHAT'S HAPPENING IN ROOM 14....MARCH 19-23

Dear Parents:

After the February break your child worked on a narrative story in class. I will be assessing this story based on our narrative rubric and sending it home on Thursday along with directions for a homework project that will be due in a week. This project will require some guidance from you. Please be on the lookout for the project information with Thursday’s homework.

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Printing/Phonograms:  We will continue to review phonograms and have weekly quizzes. For English skills we will work through Daily Oral Language (DOL) sentences to review grammar and editing skills. 

Reading: We start off our week with our listening comprehension story and assessment for a humorous fiction story called “Natural Habits”. The rest of the week we will be reading a story called “The Surprise Family”. The comprehension strategy for the week is to compare and contrast and the reading strategy is to use prior questions to focus the purpose. This is the last story for this theme, “Special Friends”.

English:  We will review skills through our Daily Oral Language (DOL) writing time.  The students will be graded on a creative sentence-writing test.

Spelling: Spelling errors on homework continue to be an issue. Parents, please check each night’s work carefully.

1.  I had cookies at the birthday party.

2.  They need to stay after school.

3.  Is he bigger than her father?

4.  Who took those from me?

5.  Why won't she come outside?    

MATH: Your child should have already brought in a labeled bag of coins to be used for our money study. If not, 10 pennies, 10 nickels, 10 dimes and 4 quarters are due TOMORROW. This week we will be focusing on the characteristics of the coins to aid in recognition. We will work on counting nickel and penny amounts, dime and penny amounts and then a combination of the three.

SCIENCE: This week we will begin working on something new and challenging! The students will be starting on in-class research reports based on an animal that was voted on (polar bear). The students will be working in small groups to read books and take notes - making sure to put the information in their own words. We will also begin our last topic for science by focusing on the characteristics of solids.

*************************SPECIAL NOTES***********************

Looking ahead:

March 26-27 – Furlough days

March 30- Teacher in-service day

Jump for Heart donation envelopes are due Thursday, March 29.

There will be no progress report this week, as I will be working on the writing assessment that your child will receive on Thursday for a homework project.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Pierce

                                  

Weekly Overview - March 13-16

HERE'S WHAT'S HAPPENING IN ROOM 14...MARCH 13-16

Dear Parents:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Phonograms/Printing: We have finished learning our list of phonograms, but we will continue to review phonograms through weekly quizzes. Beginning next week we will also use our phonogram time to do DOL (Daily Oral Language), which will involve the children in a review of English skills, and we may also use that time to review some spelling strategies. There is a phonogram quiz on Thursday.

Reading: Our week will begin with our listening comprehension story and test. We will work on our story for the week, “The New Friend”. The comprehension strategy for this story is thinking about the story structure (characters, setting, beginning, middle and end).

English/Writing: We will have an assessment for editing and is/are/was/were usage. We are continuing to work on our functional writing, our kangaroo reports and will also spend a lot of time working on our fiction animal stories.       

Spelling: There is not practice test this week because of the short week. There will be a final test on Friday.

1. Did their friends share? 

2. Was the other piece too little?  

3. Both of the boys were there.

4. I learned how to count coins.

5. I'm very glad to meet you!

MATH: We will finish up our telling time topic this week. We will continue to reinforce telling time to the hour and half-hour. Our studies will also include a brief look at ordering and estimating lengths of time for activities (such as, “I brush my teeth for 2 hours/2 minutes/2 days.). Our topic test will be on Friday. Next week we will begin working with coin recognition and counting amounts. Please be on the lookout for a note requesting certain coins for your child to bring in by the end of this week (and start saving some quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies).

SCIENCE: We will be finishing up our kangaroo reports and doing our illustrations. We also have a lab this week on animal adaptations. We will be doing a quick review of different types of animals (mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish, insects) and their characteristics.

COMPUTER LAB: We are spending most of our time in word processing now, so parent helpers are very necessary! Parents please check your schedules-we really need you!

*******************SPECIAL NOTES************************

Weather permitting- we will be doing our jumping rope on Tuesday for Jump for Heart. If your child is planning on turning in a Jump for Heart donation envelope, please have him/her do so by March 30.

Have a great week!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Pierce

Weekly Overview - March 5-9

HERE'S WHAT'S HAPPENING IN ROOM 14...MARCH 5-9

Dear Parents:

Please note that there is another minimum day this Tuesday so that staff can prepare for the Science Fair. Any projects should be brought to Room 5 (not Room 14) before or immediately after school. Please make sure that your child has followed the instructions with respect to labeling with name and room number and that all of the parts that go with the project are labeled and together for easy set-up.

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Phonograms/Printing:  We are now familiar with all of our phonograms.  We will continue to have weekly quizzes and occasional reviews.  Please review any clues of those phonograms that your child misses on the weekly quizzes.

Reading: This week we will begin Theme 9, “Special Friends”. We will start the week with our listening comprehension story (this will now be a graded test) called “Animal Helpers”. This story is a nonfiction selection talking about animals that people own to provide them with a service (e.g. a seeing-eye dog). Our story for the week is a realistic fiction story called “When I Am Old With You”. It is a beautiful story about the relationship between a boy and his grandfather.

English/Writing:  We will have a sentence-writing test on Thursday. We are continuing to work on skills as we begin work on the brainstorming and first drafts of our fiction animal stories. Students are also in the process of working on our “How to” functional writing and our informational report about kangaroos. We are doing LOTS of writing!

Spelling: Your child will be given the paper for both Monday and Tuesday night’s spelling homework on Monday so that s/he can complete it early, and not have it to do on the Science Fair night.

1.  There are some animals in the field.

2.  Does the chief like ponies?

3.  My brother baked a pie.

4.  She bought something for me.

5.  I thought they had stopped here!

MATH: We will have the topic test for Understanding Numbers to 100 on Monday. Then we will begin our topic on time. We will study the clock face to understand the meaning of the numbers and the placement of the hands. We will review telling time to the hour, and then half-hour times will be introduced and practiced. Students will be expected to read a clock and to be able to indicate the hands placement to show both hour and half-hour times.

SCIENCE: This week we will continue to work on our kangaroo research reports. The Science Fair is Tuesday at 6:30 pm. For future reference, the lab scheduled for May 24 is cancelled due to our field trip to the zoo.

************************SPECIAL NOTES************************

This week- Tuesday- 1:37 dismissal and Science Fair

Friday- Super Citizen assembly

LOOKING AHEAD: …March 12- Furlough day…March 26-27- Furlough days…March 30- Staff development day- no school

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. There will be no progress report this week.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Pierce