Thanks Again

First of all, let me thank all the parents for coming last night. I realize how hard it can be to get from work to school by 5:00 pm; your attendance showed your deep belief in your children's education. I also very sincerely appreciate the generous financial support of our classroom program. I can tell that this is going to be a very, very good year.

Today we worked a little on the visualizing strategy. Yesterday, reading the Toto story, the students identified the most descriptive language in the story. They wrote these on post-it notes and we glued them to a piece of paper.

Today, looking only at those post-its and not at any illustrations from the text, they had to create an image of some person or event in the story. This was a little hard for some of them because they have been very dependent on the illustrator to help them "see" the story. But, of course, as they grow older the number of pictures in the story will rapidly disappear. So today's exercise was to help them rely on words instead of pictures to imagine the story. Many were quite successful with this.

This student was particularly relying on the author's description of the "blue and purple hills" as you can see above.

We had our first trip to Tech Center today. Ms. Richard went over the rules and procedures and then had students start by writing a letter to their parents inviting them to Back to School Breakfast as way to review typing skills and Microsoft Word. 

After recess the students went to room 7 where Mr. Pratt worked with them on latitude and longitude. After lunch we corrected the Topic 1 math test. The results were generally quite good; ask your child to bring it home if he or she did not pull it out and proudly show it to you today.

We did our rotations in PE today with Mrs. Caruso working on endurance through jump rope, Mr. Pratt working on social skills like cooperation and anger management, and I working with them on leaping skills. Returning to the classroom, we did math. We are starting Topic 2, Rounding and Estimation. This is generally the most challenging unit of the year for students. Again, if math is frustrating at home, have them stay after school for "homework club."


Homework:  (1) Do pages 24 and 25 in the math book. The students can skip the back of the answer sheet. I couldn't remember whether I had assigned this before. It looked so familiar to all of us... (2) Write sentences for spelling words 1-10 only. (3) Do the Verb worksheet. (4) Do the letter B cursive page.