Announcements
Conferences: HOORAY! I got to meet with families to celebrate your child's progress and growth for the first half of the year. How exciting to see their journey in writing and share specific notes of your child's learning. It was a joy to connect with each of you to share these updates. As a reminder, if you ever have any concerns or would like to request a meeting, please email me, and we can find a time to meet.
*Please NO additional gifts for 4th grade buddies: We will create buddy gifts together next week and exchange them on Thursday afternoon. This reduces the chances of hurt feelings or being left out when others are receiving additional (or expensive) gifts. We have grown these precious relationships and they are not tied to “stuff.” Thank you for honoring this request!
Clever Login for iReady or Vooks: If you are looking for an educational resource to use with technology, you are welcome to use the "Clever Login QR Code" (which came home in Take Home Folders today) to log into iReady or Vooks. iReady has lessons in math and reading that are just right for your child, according to the diagonostic. Please limit to 15 minutes per session, if you do plan to use. Your child can show you how to check the progress of the lessons (to see if your child is passing lessons or clicking through them). Also, Vooks is a wonderful resource that is a digital library of wonderful books. It will read the stories to you, and it highlights each word as it is read.
*Don't feel compelled to do iReady lessons or Vooks- this is simply a resource that you may use if you would like.
(Repeated for Reference)
December 20th:
*9-9:30am Primary Winter Performance (Grades K-3)
*9:45-10:15am Intermdiate Winter Performance (Grades 4-6) for those of you with older siblings.
*10:15-11:15am Ms. Lauren's Winter Craft Party
Families welcome! The performances are in the gym, and they will showcase the work that they have been doing with Ms. Liesl in music using percussion instruments. Please have your child wear school colors (blue/green) or dark colors on this day.
Planning Ahead: We have a lot of fun activities planned the last week before Winter Break. If you are planning to be out of town, please let the front office and me know ahead of time, so that we can plan accordingly for the supplies needed for each day.
Save the Date: Ms. Lauren's Crew will be leading the all school meeting known as The Beat on January 31st from 9-9:25am in the gym. We will be presenting our learning about integrity and what it means to be CREW. You won't want to miss it!
Volunteers Opportunities
Calendar
December 20th:
*Primary Winter Performance 9-9:30am
December 21st: Community Reading 8:30-9am (Yes- on a Thursday!)
*Firefighter visit in the morning
December 22nd: No School; Teacher Work Day
December 23rd: Electronic Report Cards are available (more info next week)
December 23rd-Jan 7th: Winter Break
Crew Highlights:
In reading, we have been working on drawing inferences. I explain this as figuring out something that is not said (like how the character is feeling) by looking at clues from the picture and text and combining that with what you know about that (background knowledge) to better understand something that is happening in the story. In your nightly reading, ask your child to practice drawing an inference with you.
This week, we took some time to reflect on how it is going in writing. Students revisited our Narrative Writing Rubric to self-assess how they were doing in each area. On the backside of this sheet, there is a space to write about what students are feeling proud of and what is a goal. WOW! I was impressed with the awareness of strengths and their self-identified goals. I look forward to supporting students with these next semester.
In phonics, our letter of the week was Hh. I woud give students a list of three words, such as hip, head, and cute. Students would have to tell me the word that did not belong and did not start with H. I have noticed so much growth with students being able to discern the beginning sound! Also, with white boards, we practiced sounding out and spelling words, such as hot, hat, hip, ham, and hop. It was a review week on sight words, so we practiced he, has, play, and she. We will have a phonics assessment next week. Here is the updated phonics list. Also phonics booklets went home today. These have great ideas to reinforce learning at home.
In math, we are wrapping up a unit of two dimensional shapes. We are naming shapes and noticing how many sides and corners they have. Students should be able to easily identify a circle, square, rectangle, triangle, and hexagon. We had some time to explore learning using manipulatives in addition to our workbook.
In expedition, we have been learning about how community helpers work as crew. More specifically, we are focusing on firefighters. We have learned about a day in the life of a firefighter, as well as some of the history of firefighting. (Students were blown away that in the olden days, they had to use buckets of water!) We are looking forward to our visit by local Castle Rock Fire Department next Thursday!
With 4th grade buddies, our crew had a blast writing a story about silly and mischievous elves. These went home on Thursday.
Getting ready for our crew's song at the Winter Performance next Wednesday!
Have a wonderful, restful weekend! Stay well!
~Ms. Lauren
