Weekly Newsletter for 10/15/15

Dear Room 4 Families,

This week your child has been practicing what to do in the event of an earthquake. We participated in The Great Shakeout at 10:15 am. Your child also learned about water conservation in our Earthscapades assembly. This week in school we have started our informational writing unit. Your child will be studying the text features of non-fiction books and writing an all about book on a person that they know very well. In math we are working on place value and expanded form. I am currently setting your child up on a differentiated math system called Front Row, which will be able to provide individualized instruction to your child and help identify areas of strength and weakness.

There is NO SCHOOL tomorrow, Friday, October 16th due to staff development. Your child’s homework packet was due today and Week 5 homework has been distributed, but they can turn it in their Week 4 homework on Monday if they forgot to bring it today. The Mandarin dictation test has been postponed to Monday due to the earthquake drill and assembly this morning.

Berkeley Repertory School of Theater will be visiting our classroom on Monday for a fun reading comprehension workshop! Thank you for your donations towards this fun literacy event.

Progress reports were handed out to your child this morning. Please sign and return the copy of your child’s progress report to school on Monday. The reading levels mentioned in the comments of the report card are based off of the new school assessment provided by Fountas and Pinnelle and this is the first year we have used them. Please note that the check boxes are indicative of their progress for where we are at in the school year and what we are learning. Each section will be graded in more detail on their first trimester report card. Students who may have a plus in math right now may struggle with a future math concept and the grade will be lower, whereas a student reading under grade level and has a minus may have many checks and pluses with comprehension and other areas in English Language Arts. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your child’s progress report, please let me know and I will be happy to make an appointment to meet with you after school.

Halloween is on a Saturday this year. As a school site decision, there will be NO COSTUMES worn on Friday, October 30th. It will be a regular school day and classrooms have the option to show Halloween spirit by wearing black and orange (not required) and to have a party at the end of the day based on teacher discretion. Yvonne Lee is currently working on acquiring volunteers and materials to run 6 Halloween centers at the end of the day. Please contact her if you’d like to come in and run a center, donate towards a craft/snack, or have any questions about our classroom celebration.

I am running low on Scotch 3M glue sticks (52 students are using them regularly in my classroom) and could use some donations of a few packs of 24 glue sticks.

Here are next week’s homework links: 

• Chinese: https://graceyou.com/mandarin-homework-week-5/
• Spelling:  https://graceyou.com/spelling-week-5/

Have a wonderful 3-day weekend!

-Ms. You