Weekly Newsletter for 9/23/16

Dear Room 4 Families,

It was great meeting everyone at Back-To-School Night! If you weren’t able to make it, all of the information I went over is posted under “Information” on the navigation bar above. I will be out of the classroom after lunch on Thursday, and for the entire day on Friday. Please bring any immediate concerns to the office as I may not be able to respond to messages in a timely manner.

The homework information page is a work in progress. I will update with pictures once I have permission from a family to use their homework as an example. The links and tutorial video for recording a voki are available here: https://graceyou.com/homework-information/ – Please contact me if you’d like to try out a spellingcity.com premium account. I have talked about this in more detail on the homework information page.

If you’d like to volunteer in the classroom, please read the information over on the Parent Volunteers page before signing up for a spot on our signup.com page. The link is posted on the parent volunteers page.

This week in school we have been improving our independence and stamina for work. We are studying r controlled a for our spelling and are working on understanding story structure. We started writer’s workshop this week and have been taking turns being a storyteller using our high-5 story telling technique. Once everyone has shared a personal narrative, we will learn how to record our stories properly. I am currently not focusing on spelling correctly during writing in the classroom because this causes a lot of fear and hesitation for students and they get “stuck” and stop writing. In order to have them write down their ideas, I am not spelling words for them. I will have them circle the words that they don’t know how to spell and we will go over how to revise, edit, and write a final draft during our Writer’s Workshop.

In math, we are working on addition and subtraction concepts. We are focusing on story problems and learning the words to help us determine if we are putting together or taking away. We are also learning about part-part whole. Please check your child’s backpack for unfinished work, or work that was completed incorrectly. Your child may need some one-on-one help to clear up any misunderstandings.

In Chinese, we are working on our reading passage, which is a review on colors and fruits. Your child is playing games with Mr. Chen, working on oral language, practicing their dictation words, and writing sentences using the vocabulary from this week’s text.

Here are next week’s homework links:

Chinese: https://graceyou.com/mandarin-homework-week-2/

Spelling: https://graceyou.com/spelling-week-2/

Thank you and have a great weekend!

-Ms. You