Weekly Newsletter for 9/22/17

Dear Room 4 Families,

It was great meeting everyone at Back to School Night this week! If you were unable to come, please check out the Powerpoint Presentation that was attached to the weekly newsletter link in ClassDojo. Not everything that was said is covered in the slides. Also, please note that the data collection for Mandarin language acquisition is a few years old and calculated from an older bell schedule. The data is also from full immersion research, which is 100% of the day in the target language, not the 50% model that we have at our program at Stonebrae. The data is just to give an idea of the amount of time your child needs to be exposed to Mandarin in order to gain fluency.

Thank you to all of the hard work you are doing with your child on reinforcing cooperative behavior at school and talking to your child about negative points. Please continue to check your child’s ClassDojo behavior report daily and encourage them to get more participation points/on-task/or following directions, and reminding them to go to the bathroom during their breaks.

This week in English Language Arts…

We have started using our interactive English and Math journals. Your child has been studying different spelling patterns for long ‘A’ and ‘E’ and will continue with the vowels next week. We are learning about being helpful community members by learning through RJ’s experiences at school and how we should use our social filters to say polite remarks that are not hurtful. Your child is getting ready for Writer’s Workshop by listening to various personal narrative stories, learning that spelling should not interfere with putting our ideas down on paper, and learning proofreading marks through our morning work. We also learned about the three branches of our government and how a bill becomes a law.

This week in Math…

We have continued with math mountains to help us with our addition and subtraction fact families. We are learning and using our doubles facts, making a ten, skip-counting, odd/even, and analyzing word problems. Your child has been enjoying playing math games that help build their number sense. Please help your child be ready for math by practicing their basic math facts, creating a friendly ten, finding the missing part of ten, and skip counting odd/even numbers.

This week in Chinese…

We started the regular Chinese learning routine, starting  with terms of the week (colors), passage of the week, science (rainbow color order), and more! It’s a big adjustment to many students with the effort they need to put in. We’re also wrapping up the ‘My Family’ writing and sharing.

Homework…

Week 2 homework has been passed out in this week’s Friday folder. This week we start our Chinese reading on iChineseReader. Your child’s login card has been stapled to this week’s homework packet and you will need to check Mr. Chen’s homework page for the password and details. If you have lost your login information, please contact Mr. Chen.

Some families have asked about using Voki. The app and webpage are free to use but have paid features that may be confusing. You do not need an account to create a Voki, however you can create a free account to save your child’s work. You do not have to use Voki at all as long as you take some sort of recording of your child reading their Chinese passage and send it to Mr. Chen. If you’d like to see how to create a Voki without an account, you can view this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JrU9Jh5QAs&feature=youtu.be

This week’s Chinese homework links are available to view here: https://sites.google.com/site/17to18chen/homework/week2mandarinhomework

Upcoming Events…

• 10/4 – PTA Watchdogs Movie Night 6pm
• 10/13 – School Pictures
• 10/18 – PTA Walkathon
• 10/27 – PTA Fall Fest
• 10/31 – Minimum Day

Have a wonderful weekend!

-Ms. You