Newsletter 10

2005-2006                          Room 302—Newsletter 10                     http://room302.blogspot.com
     

November 4, 2005

Dear Families,

What a great party.  Thanks so much to everyone for helping out.  If you didn’t get a chance to be here, you can get a feel for some of it on the blog site.  I still have a scale and some knives here, so if you’re missing either, please let me know.  The next big thing is conferences.  I’m hoping to hear from you about what you’ve noticed, and what you’re wondering, because you know your child best.  
Here’s what’s going on…..
In reading….
I’m currently assessing the students, and I’ll share my findings at conferences.  I’d like you to do the same thing at home, in a different way.  I’m assessing for reading strategies and appropriate levels.  I’d like you to assess for reading behaviors and attitudes:  How often does he or she choose to read, and what types of things?  Does he see himself as a reader.  Does she have favorite authors, or stories that she rereads?  I can get some idea of these things here, but I want to know what happens away from school.  
In writing….
If you could see the huge variety of writing that happens every day, you would know why I dislike saying some kids are “meeting standards” and some kids are above or below.  Some, but not all, of the things we’ve discussed this last week include rereading, a date on every page, “period-space-upper case” to end a sentence and start a new one, beginning-middle-end, showing and telling details, mixing capital and lower case letters, and using spaces between words.  That is a lot to keep in mind, but we’re practicing; and we’re having fun doing it.  
In math….
We started the next workbook in the series, which is Building Number Sense.  My teacher’s guide says our emphasis will be “Counting quantities up to about 20, developing strategies for counting and comparing the number of dots in dot patterns and strategies for organizing collections of objects so that they are easy to count and combine, and using numerals to record how many.”
Conferences…
Please return the yellow slips as soon as possible, so I know the time I picked is good for you.  If not, please let me know so we can plan another time.
Current Chapter Book Read Aloud…
Winnie the Pooh  by A. A. Milne
Calendar…
Friday, November 4—Science Fair, Western Dance
Thursday, November 10—No school
Friday, November 11—No school
November 17-November 22—Early release days; conferences
Wednesday, November 23—Early release day
November 24 & 25—No school
November 29—Noah’s birthday


Sincerely,


Jeff