3-10 January 2010
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Thursday, 7 January is a half-day of school, with dismissal occurring @ 11:15. Lunch will NOT be served on this day.
Welcome back to school and the MOST important part of the year for learning and accelerating progress and learning to prepare for future learning experiences.
We'll begin with creating a new bulletin board "In the Wintertime". I'll post the results in a new slide show for January. We're working on writing more neatly, self-editing each sentence as they finish their written work and appropriate spacing. Some of us continue to work on letter formation, also.
Reading Response Journals will be added to their Reading Bags in this new year, also. I am almost ready to send these home, so expect to see them in their reading bag on Monday, 11 January. Look for the directions inside the front cover of the composition notebook. I will interact with this journals on occasion. :o) We will begin timing reading passages for fluency and accuracy with running records, and occasionally 'record' their reading for them to listen to. Throughout the rest of this quarter, until the end of JANUARY, we'll also complete another quarter's end of assessment and benchmark measurement.
We'll look for self-started journal entries on topics of individual interest or prompts generated by the teacher. Please continue discussing what is happening in the Reading Bags' little books, to help generate 1-2 sentence entries, composed by the use of their own language and interface with the book(s).
There will be a slight change in the reading material they are bringing home. You will see smaller copied books, a new reading log, new high-frequency word lists, and most will begin Reading Counts tests with the leveled readers in guided reading Levels D,E,F,G,H, and on. Please assist by helping them problem solve unknown words. For each test that they score no less than 7/10 questions correct, a point will be given. It's fun to see them blossom as reader's in more appropriate books. These are very different, but remember to let them preview the pictures in order to learn what they'll be reading about.
I have begun testing in Reading and Math for the end of quarter progress reports in 3 weeks. Most have experienced continued growth. We're pushing through our standards and expect more learning to come.
A huge thanks for all your generosity at the holiday time. Your thoughtful gifts were so appreciated and so fun to open. The gift of time will be the most important one for your child in the coming months. Don't pass up the opportunity to watch them grow by reading with them and watching their newly attained skills appear.
Happy new year!
Mrs. Petty
