Waterslide Time!

Yeah, we met our reading goal and can go on the waterslide tomorrow!

Please come to school wearing your bathing suit under your clothes. If you can’t wear your bathing suit to school, you will be given time to change.

In a plastic bag, bring a towel, underclothes, and a t-shirt you can get wet. (EVERYONE GOING ON THE SLIDE NEEDS A T-SHIRT!)  Your dry clothes will go into your plastic bag when you are on the slide.

After sliding you will be given time to change back into your dry clothes and put your wet clothes and towel in the bag.

Please note: The school does not have extra clothes and towels.

Summer Skills

This summer I will keep the RAZ Kids accounts and XtraMath accounts accounts open (as long as the websites themselves allow it) so your child has access to all of the great materials they need to keep their reading and math fact skills going. The links on our class Just for Kids page will also be available all summer long to keep up with skills practice. 

Classroom Library

As our year winds down, there’s lots of cleaning and organizing that takes place. It will be helpful if all classroom library books that might be hanging around at home are brought back to school as soon as possible. Please encourage your child to check all around his/her room, and other spots in the house where classroom books might be hiding.

Waterslide Update

Our class isn’t very close to meeting the goal for the waterslide! We’re about 7,000 minutes under goal. I need your help to make sure your child is filling in the bubble sheet each night for his/her reading. If they lose it I have more in the classroom where the reading logs are (your child knows where to find them), and I placed a digital copy on the File Cabinet page of our class website. Don’t forget, parent signatures are needed on this form. Thanks for helping make sure our class gets to enjoy a fun reward for all their hard work reading!

New Schedule with Wellness Breaks

As you know from Dr. Kitching’s letter earlier in the week, we start our new pilot program with Wellness breaks when we return on Tuesday. This means that our daily schedule will look different. Here’s what it’ll look like for now, although it’s subject to change:

• 8:45 - 8:55 - Morning work
• 8:55-9:25 - Spelling/Word Work/Handwriting or Science/Social Studies
• 9:25 - 9:45 - Interactive read aloud
• 9:45 - 11:00 - Math (snack during the math lesson and video at 9:45, 10:20-11:00 math tutor)
• 11:00-12:00 - Specials
• 12:05-12:25 - Writing mini lesson
• 12:30-1:00 - Lunch/Recess
• 1:00-1:40 - Writing
• 1:40-2:00- Reading mini lesson
• 2:00 - 2:20 - Wellness Break
• 2:20 - 3:15 - Reading (2:40-3:10 - STARS)
• 3:15-3:29 - Clean room and pack up
• 3:30 - Dismissal

Weekly Wrap Up

I wish you could have been flies on the wall during the last couple of weeks to see how hard your children have worked on their SBAC testing. I’m very proud of them for the effort and stamina they showed during testing. We have pretty much finished with testing, with just make-ups early next week. Thanks so much for helping make sure your child was at their best each testing day.

As you know from the capacity measurement homework, we are spending a few days studying measurement of capacity and mass, using both metric and customary units. If you go to the grocery store with your child this weekend, you can turn it into a huge learning experience by having them locate items measured in cups, pints, quarts, gallons, milliliters, and liters, as well as grams, kilograms, ounces, and pounds. Of course if the thought of trying to do this in the grocery store with your child makes you laugh (or gives you hives) you could send your child on a measurement of mass treasure hunt in the kitchen (similar for what they did for capacity homework), looking for items with weight measured in grams, kilograms, ounces, and pounds.

Help!  No one volunteered for the one chaperone spot open for our June 2nd trip to the State Capital, Legislative Office Building, Museum of State History, and Bushnell Park in Hartford. We’ll leave Toffolon around 11:00 and be back around 3:00. It’s a big day, with a lot of walking. If you’d like to join us please email me or send in a note with your child.

Here's what we're learning about next week:

• Reader’s Workshop: Elements of fairy tales
• Writer’s Workshop: Adapting fairy tales
• Spelling: Unit 31 - Words home on Monday, test on Friday
• Math: Measurement of mass then Data (aka graphing)
• Social Studies: CT

Please remember that my door is always open if you have any questions or concerns. Together we are partners in your child’s education!

Chaperones Needed

One chaperone is needed for our June 2nd trip to the State Capital, Legislative Office Building, Museum of State History, and Bushnell Park in Hartford. We’ll leave Toffolon around 11:00 and be back around 3:00. It’s a big day, with a lot of walking. If you’d like to join us please email me or send in a note with your child.  (Field trip permission forms are going home on Monday.)