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

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.)

Indian Rock Field Trip

What a great learning experience we had on the field trip to Indian Rock!  The students shared what they learned on a Padlet (think of it as a virtual sticky note poster).

Created with Padlet

Here are a few pics from our day. Check out the October photo album for more.

Weekly Update

Have you heard the news about handwriting? We started cursive recently! You should be a fly on the wall to see how hard your child is working, and the level of intense concentration. You can see a copy of our Handwriting Without Tears program cursive alphabet on the back cover of your child’s Jungle Book. In some cases the letters are formed and/or connected rather differently from what we all learned in school. I’ve told the students that there are different ways to make and connect letters, and that I’ll show them both the way the book does it, and the way most adults learned to do it. I’ve also told them that they can do it either way. Once the children have learned all the letters I let them choose what, if anything, they want to write in cursive.

Next week we finish up our study of addition and subtraction as your child learns to do what is called, “three digit subtraction across zeros with regrouping.” What this means is learning how to do subtraction problems like 400-214. I’ll be teaching it through the use of base ten blocks on the computer, which allows the students to drag and drop the blocks to help them see the regrouping needed. If you have an iPad there’s a great free app called Number Pieces (by Math Learning Center) that your child might find helpful when doing their homework. If you have another type of device, you might want to search wherever you find apps to see if there’s a similar app. Also, your child can always rewatch the video that goes with lesson 3-9, or use the eTools in enVision, found in the student tools section of the enVision website when your child logs into it.

Thursday we are making slime in class! It’s a VERY messy activity. Your child is very likely to get it on their clothes. Please don’t send them to school in good clothes that day.

Friday is our field trip to Indian Rock. Your child must be at school on time that day, we leave at 9:00! Please keep an eye on the weather forecast, and dress your child for a day spent mostly outside in nature. Also, remember that lunches need to be in disposable bags, and clearly marked with your child’s first and last name. Drinks must also be disposable. No lunch boxes or other items that have to be carried back on the bus will be allowed.

Finally, here's what we'll be learning about next week:

Reader’s Workshop: Creating a book talk video or writing a book talk blog entry
Writer’s Workshop: Typing/publishing small moment stories
Spelling: Unit 8 - Words home on Monday, test on THURSDAY due to field trip
Math: Finish up addition and subtraction with regrouping
Science: Matter

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