Hello families,
This past week we researched the different periods of the timeline for the Coming of Humans. Each child chose their period and are learning more about transportation, food, shelter, and other basic human needs during that time. They will be putting their work out in the hallway on our bulletin board. Be sure to check it out the next time you're at school! For those students doing book reports, the reports along with the project are due next Friday. The kids are doing the bulk of the work in class but they are welcome to work on the project and presentation piece at home with you if you like. They have been expected to be self-managing in class and responsible for this work for the past two weeks. We will be starting over with another book the following week. I'm looking forward to seeing their growth in this process in the areas of management, responsibility, and public speaking. Starting at the beginning of third quarter we have been doing morning board work. The kids have 15-20 minutes each morning to work out the problems on the board. They include 6 math problems (a mix of addition, subtraction and multiplication), a story problem, and one sentence in which they need to identify the mistakes. I have been blown away at the progress of this activity. The first week the kids were so overwhelmed and thought they weren't going to be able to do it and now we are flying through the problems and they are catching even my trickiest problems and equations. I am so proud of them for pushing through challenging work!! It has been so fun to see their eyes light up when they make the connections. I have also seen huge gains in their math fact assessments. So many good things are happening in the classroom. I just love it! If you have not signed up for a conference yet, please make sure to mark it in your calendar to do so. The online scheduler opens on February 6th. Conferences will be a maximum of 30 minutes. I wanted to allow a little more time for chatting this time and to show off some of your child's work. Please let me know if you need an alternate time outside of the hours I have set well in advance. Our first parent meeting for the Alaska Sea Life Center field trip will be at the end of the month. It is scheduled for February 28th at 4pm. It will be held in Ms.Goodman's room, across the hallway. This meeting will inform you of our agenda and give you a chance to ask any questions you may have about the field trip. We will also give you the field trip permission form during this meeting. Payment for the trip is due in March. It is $60 per person, including chaperones. Thank you, have a great day! Christine Homan
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Happy Friday!
This week we started working on our Third Great Lesson; The Coming of Humans. Each of the kids chose a period of time that they wanted to focus on and they are working now in small groups to research defense, art, religion, medicine, transportation, shelter and food during their period. Make sure to check out the bulletin board in the hallway as they place their artifacts on the board as they complete them. Beginning next week each student needs to have a tonette (recorder) to use for music class. This was on the supply list at the beginning of the school year. If you do not have one yet you can go to Music Man to purchase one. They are $5. The kids will be using them for a few weeks and they will be stored at school. Please label them with your child's name as they all look alike. It has been very cold out recently, as you well know. We have several students that are coming to class unprepared for the weather. If your child wears shorts to school, please have them bring snow pants or long pants to change into for recess. It is far too cold to be going outside with bare legs. Each child also needs to have a hat and gloves. If you need assistance in getting these items please shoot me an email and I will help you find a set. Parent Teacher Conferences are coming up soon. I have set up the schedule and currently am plugging people in already. The online registration opens on the 6th of February but I can do it myself manually if you're ready to book your conference. These are important meetings; please make sure to schedule a conference and to show up on time. Thank you! Our first parent meeting for the Alaska Sea Life Center field trip happening in April is coming up quickly. It will be February 28th at 4pm in Ms.Goodman's room which is right across the hallway from our classroom. We will be talking about the overall agenda of the trip, behavior expectations of students and chaperones, supply lists, and handing out the actual permission slip for the trip. The money for admission is due at the second parent meeting which will be in March. We have many parents going with us and I am so thankful for that! The kids and I are so looking forward to this experience and with the additional hands and help I know that it will be a really excellent trip. Nearly all of our students are going; how cool is that?? :) If you have any questions or concerns please send me an email or stop by class before 8:30 to chat. Thank you and have a great weekend! Christine Homan Hello families,
It is that time of year again! Parent-Teacher conferences are just around the corner. I have set up my schedule and you will be able to sign up online starting February 3rd. I will be doing one conference per morning from 8-8:30am from February 13th through the 16th. Conference week is the following week, I will have one opening Tuesday through Thursday and then from 1:00-4:00 in the afternoons. Each conference is 30 minutes and they start on the hour and half hour. If you would like to sign up now, please let me know and I will plug you in. Thank you! Christine Homan Happy New Year!
We have had an excellent first week back to school. I am so impressed with how well the kids transitioned back from our long break. I hope that you had a great time with your family and that you made lots of great memories together! We spent this week wrapping up the loose ends of our lessons from before the break. We worked on cardinal directions, topic sentences, paragraph writing, geometry and more! Next week we will be moving into our Third Great Lesson; the coming of humans. We will also be continuing to work on writing "super sentences" and quality paragraphs with a main idea. Some of the kids are switching from the Daily 5 to book reports. These students are responsible for choosing a just-right book for themselves, managing their time each day, and writing a 5 paragraph book report explaining specific ideas and aspects of the book. They will create a project and present the report to the class at the end. I am looking forward to this and how it works within our normal work schedule. I am so proud to say that all of the kids have either stayed in the spelling group or bumped up one or more levels. That is so very exciting! Our reading skills have also gone through the roof since the beginning of the year and our math is coming along nicely. I am just so stinking proud of all that the kids have done so far this year. It has been an amazing school year! Please make sure to send in the swimming field trip form. We will need many drivers for this field trip. Please make sure to check your insurance information to make sure you have the correct amount of insurance to drive students. If you do not and you want to chaperone you can still come, you will just drive your child and meet us at the pool. Each swimmer, including chaperones, is $5. We are in desperate need for snack! We had enough to get us through this week but we will need snack going forward. Thank you to those you regularly send in supplies; I so appreciate your support of our classroom and it does not go unnoticed. As always, if you have any questions please let me know. Christine Homan |
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