Weekly Wrap Up

I’d love to get parent feedback on the various methods of communication I use to share information from the classroom. If you get a chance over the next few days, please take a few minutes to fill out a really short communication survey I put together. It’s linked off the front of our class website:  https://sites.google.com/a/plainvilleschools.org/carnevalea/ 

Our field trip to the New Britain Museum of Art is on Friday, March 11th. Since we are leaving before our normal lunch time, we’ll picnic in the classroom before we leave on the trip. Students can still buy their lunch, or bring it, the same as they would any other day.

New pictures from January, February and early March have been added to the class photo album page on our website!

Look for the conference appointment slip, with your conference time on it, to come home on Monday in your child’s Jungle Book! Please let me know as soon as you can if you need to change it.

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

• Reader’s Workshop: Book clubs 
• Writer’s Workshop: Persuasive Writing 
• Math: Fractions
• Social Studies: Connecticut

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

Weekly Wrap Up

Today your child is bringing home a math fact test score report. It includes their monthly fact tests from December until now. I know you see a weekly score on their progress reports. This monthly score report will enable you to see growth each month since they began testing for multiplication and division. If you’re wondering why the scores on the February test might be different from the scores on the most recent weekly tests, it’s because there were different tests given on different days. Please sign it the for this weekend and return it on Monday with your child. 

Do your kids ever complain that they’re bored or there’s nothing to do? Our class website has the answer for you and your child! The Just for Kids section is filled with links to educational activities and games, as well as keyboarding practice. The Safari Scholar section will stretch your child’s brain with 100 unique and challenging tasks!

Conference request forms are due on Monday. If you haven’t returned yours, please do so on Monday. If you lost it, just drop me an email this weekend and let me know what days/times are best for you, and I’ll fit you into the schedule. The choices for conferences are:

• Monday, March 21st in the evening
• Tuesday, March 22nd in the afternoon
• Wednesday, March 23rd in the evening

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

• Reader’s Workshop: Growing theories about characters
• Writer’s Workshop: A little fun story writing followed by the Persuasive Writing unit pretest
• Math: Fractions
• Social Studies: Connecticut 

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

Weekly Wrap Up

Did you hear we’re learning how to keyboard, and your child can practice with the same program at home? Generally we take about half an hour on Fridays to build our keyboarding skills. Sometimes we sneak in a few extra minutes other days if we finish something early, but not very often. We’re using the website, Typing Club. If your child logs into the Chrome browser at home with her/her district Google account information, and then accesses the site through the district apps link in the browser (I call it the “waffle”), they can pick up where they left off at school. Once they login again in school, they won’t have to repeat the section they did at home. The key is to make sure they login with their district Google account. We’ve done this in school before, so your child should be comfortable doing it at home.

If you’re following us on Twitter you’ve seen the links to the Native American project presentations. The projects and the presentations are incredible! Your children worked so hard, and I’m so very proud of them! The projects will be on display in the hallway during conferences, and QR codes will be available so you can also view their presentations. If you don’t have a QR code reader on your device, you might want to get one before conferences.

If you’re not following our class on Twitter you’re missing out on all the great things we do each day! You can find us sharing our learning at: @MrsCarnevale3rd. Follow us! You’ll know something that went on in our room each day, and hopefully never hear “nothing” when you ask your child what they did in school that day!  :)

Conference appointments went home early this week. If you didn’t get yours please let me know ASAP.  Also, if your schedule has changed since you returned the sign up form, and now you need to reschedule, please contact me ASAP.

Here's what we'll be learning about next week:

• Reader’s Workshop: Reading for information and main idea/supporting details
• Writer’s Workshop: Information Writing
• Math: Topic 6 test and begin Topic 7 - meanings of division
• Science: Habitats

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

Weekly Wrap Up, Sept. 25th

It was fabulous to meet so many of you at Open House! I know it can be a whirlwind of a night, especially if you have multiple classrooms to visit. Hopefully the tour your child gave you of our room and their things gave you a little insight into their life at school. Our first conference isn’t until December, so if you have any questions or concerns between now and then, or just want to check in on your child’s progress, please let me know. I’ll be glad to schedule an earlier conference.

As you know, we are working on writing small moment stories, telling a true story bit by bit, moment by moment. You can help at home when your child is telling you about something that happened. You can ask him/her to tell you their story in very small detail, bit by bit, moment by moment, so you can picture it like a movie. It’s often helpful for a child to rehearse telling a story, listing what happened across their fingers. This helps them remember to tell it in order.

If your child has trouble with their math homework, the instructional video from the day on the enVision Math website can always be watched at home. To access the video after logging into enVision from the link on our Just for Kids page, students can click on the “Explore” button on the right side of the banner. From there they can click on topic, and then select the lesson. I showed the children how to access their books and videos today, so they should be able to help you if needed.

Thanks to everyone who filled out the contact information/permission. I will send home contact information for the class by the end of next week. If you did not return the form to me, I cannot include your child’s contact information. When/if missing forms are returned, I’ll send out updated contacted information.

Here's what's on our learning safari next week:

• Reader’s Workshop: Strategies to understand a story, and focusing on increasing reading stamina
• Writer’s Workshop: Paragraphs in narrative writing, and mapping out elements in narrative writing
• Math: Using mental math to add and subtract (we start rounding to nearest 10 and 100 and estimation the following week)

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

Weekly Wrap Up

Conference appointments have been set, and your form should be attached to this newsletter. Every effort has been made to accommodate your first choice of days, times requested, and to coordinate with teachers of your other child(ren). If you find that you are not able to make our conference please let me know as soon as possible and I’ll be glad to reschedule.

Your child will bring home his/her report card on Thursday. Only the envelope needs to come back (signed). Please keep the report card at home.

Our new math topic can be a bit tricky for some, especially finding equivalent fractions and comparing fractions. You might want to check on how your child is doing with his/her math homework each night.

We have a shortage of Kleenex at Toffolon right now, and I’m not sure when we’ll be getting more. Any donations for the classroom that you can send in for now with your child will be very gratefully accepted.

There are a few other items we could use in our classroom. Many thanks if you can send any of these in:

• Plastic spoons and forks for forgotten ones at snack time
• Plastic grocery store bags - Great for when kids forget their backpack or need to carry extra stuff home. We also use these for personal trash bags during cold season.
• Back issues of children’s magazines, such as Highlights, Sports Illustrated for Kids, or National Geographic for Kids - Great for something different to read!

Here's what we'll be learning about next week:

Reader’s Workshop: Biographies
Writer’s Workshop: Opinion Writing
Spelling: Unit 23 - Words home on Monday, test on Thursday
Math: Topics10 - Fractions
Science: Habitats

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