Weekly Newsletter for 9/30/16

Dear Room 4 Families,

Thank you for all of your continued support! Our class has been settling down better this week with less disruptions and conflicts. You may start to see more negative points on ClassDojo as I become more strict about my requirements to help your child become an independent worker (on task,  following directions, talking out of turn, sitting properly).

In English Language Arts, we have been working on story structure, the -ai- vowel team, indepdenent reading centers, word attack strategies, rhyming words. We have been reading stories to help understand cooperative behavior and the expectations of being a student. More of these books are on our classroom Amazon Wishlist if you’d like to contribute towards our classroom community. We have started writing in our Writer’s Workshop by writing personal narratives about stories that really happened to us. We are currently working on the brainstorm, pre-writing, and writing portions of our workshop time. During this phase, I ask students to not care about spelling so that they can get all of their ideas down on paper. We will go over the revise, peer-edit, and final draft phase in the upcoming weeks.

In Math, we are wrapping up Unit 1 – Creating a Community of Mathematicians where we have learned that making mistakes are a gift, talked about the growth mindset (being smart is trying hard and not giving up!), and worked on our mathematical communication skills and partner work as we work with addition and subtraction concepts.

In Chinese, we are reviewing colors and fruits as we get used to the routines of writing with stroke order, reading with proper pronunciation, speaking clearly, creating our own sentences, and doing Chinese centers. Unfinished work from Chinese class has been given to your child to take home to finish. Thank you to the families that returned them the next day! For the Chinese home

Here are next week’s homework links:

• Chinese: https://graceyou.com/mandarin-homework-week-3/

For the Voki homework recording, if Voki is not cooperating with you, you can send me a recording of your child reading a passage in whichever way is the easiest and most convenient for you. I have had parents send in a camera phone video, voice clips, movie maker, etc.

• Spelling: https://graceyou.com/spelling-week-3/

In other news, Ms. Teng, Ms. Chiu, and I will be running a hula hoop physics booth at Science in the Park tomorrow (10/1) at Alden E. Oliver Sports Park from 9 am – 2 pm. This is a great community activity that is rather large and has many science experiments with takeaways, companies with giveaways, and really fun activities such as a DJ, animals, play areas, etc. Admission is free for this great community event! I hope to see you there if you have time to stop by.

Have a great weekend,

-Ms. You