Newsletter 4 10/27/2011
Dear Families,
I'm glad some of you were able to join us at curriculum night and I hope you found it useful. Since some people weren't here, I'll try to cover some of the information in newsletters, as I update you on other things. For updates on daily classroom stuff, Twitter is your best bet.
Class Rules
Our class rules were generated by the students and I putting together a list of things we thought important. They reflect student priorities, as well as my own. My hope is to make the classroom and its protocol "ours" instead of just "mine". Here is what we wrote and signed:
o Be kind and respectful.
o Talk when it's your turn. Be quiet when you should.
o Help each other.
o Don't mess it up.
o No yelling.
o If there's a problem that concerns you, try to make it better.
Twitter.com is a web site where people send short updates on what they are doing. I use it in 4 ways: (1) to review what we're learning in class, (2) to help students become better writers, (3) to help students keep up with current technology in authentic ways, and (4) to keep families up to date on what we're doing in class.
I'll also use it sometimes (along with email) for updates or announcements. If you choose to "follow" us, you can even get text message updates on phones every time we write a new entry, or "tweet". You do not have to follow us, or have an account, to read our tweets. Just go to www.twitter.com/room302 .
Homework
As I said at the parent meeting, I will sometimes send work home, and sometimes students will choose to do work at home.
My hope is that families are still finding time to read aloud to the students at home each day. I find that the older they get, the more fun it is (for me) because the stories get better. My daughter is a "reluctant" reader, but when forced to choose a book to read by herself, she will often choose a book that she has heard me read out loud. She understands the big picture (storyline, characters, problems, etc.) and is then more ready to handle the whole thing on her own.
Ideally, school work done at home would be relatively brief, and would enhance family time together, rather than compete with it.
Math
I will often give a pretest when we begin a unit, and a posttest when we're done. The pretest offers students a nice view of where we're going, what we'll learn, and how the pieces fit together. It also shows the skills they already have. It can be helpful to compare the pretest and the posttest to see evidence of learning. I'll send those home when I don't need them, so you can see how your child is doing.
One thing I want ALL students to have is addition facts memorized. Many do not. Stopping to solve simple addition facts like 6+7 or 17-9 wastes time and causes errors. I'm sending home triangles with fact families for the students to practice. You can also use any game that requires adding or subtracting, and we've talked about some of these in class. I suggest starting by memorizing doubles (e.g. 6+6=12, 12-6=6) and combinations of 10 (e.g. 7+3=10, 3+7+10, 10-3=7, 10-7=3). Memorizing "families" helps students understand relationships between numbers, and means if they know one fact, they know four.
How do you know if your child needs practice? One way is to ask them. Most of them know if they struggle here. Another way is to cover one corner of the fact triangle—see if he or she can tell you the missing number and the 4 equations in the family.
Volunteers
Please let me know if you'd like to volunteer to help us—we'd love to have you. I can think of 3 ways: in class; special events in class, like parties; field trips. In all cases we need paperwork filled out in advance. Please turn it in a month or more in advance, so there is sufficient time to check references, etc. You can find information and forms here: http://www.enumclaw.wednet.edu/families/volunteers.aspx .
One current need is people to help plan/coordinate parties. Please let me know if you can help with this.
Book Orders
I have set up an online account for those who would like to order books from Scholastic. I If you order online, you can choose what you want and pay immediately. They'll send the books here and our class still gets points to order classroom books. If you don't have home access to a computer, I believe you can still go online and order from a public computer, like at the public library. The web site is Web address: www.scholastic.com/bookclubs . Please ask me if you have questions. You can also call Scholastic at 1-800-724-6527.
Calendar
Sunday, October 23—Grace's Birthday
Thursday, November 17—Early Release, 12:15, Conferences
Friday, November 18—Early Release, 12:15, Conferences
Monday, November 21—Early Release, 12:15, Conferences
Tuesday, November 22—Early Release, 12:15, Conferences
Wednesday, November 23—Early Release, 12:15
Thursday, November 24—No school
Friday, November 25—No school
Chapter Book
Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Sincerely,
Jeff
