September 14-18, 2009

Another nice fall football weekend, hope your team won!

Mrs. Itson, our fabulous intern will begin her full time teaching responsibilities this week. She will be teaching the class all day for the next two weeks. She has been with us since the first day of school and is more than familiar with our procedures and routines, as well as the academic content that we are learning every day. I will be in and out of the classroom and I will also be working with some of the children one on one in areas that they may be a little weak. Everything in our day and your child's academic work will remain the same. I know Mrs. Itson will do a fabulous job and I am more than sure the children will be so sweet for her, as they are for me. Mrs. Itson's last day with us will be Wednesday, September 30th. I would like to do something special for her. I will be in contact with you closer to that time. As always, if you have ANY questions or concerns at all, please do not hesitate to contact me.

We had a good week last week overall-still a few areas we need to work on, like times of transition from one activity to another and lunch time, talking quietly! It all comes down to listening and following directions.

Children receive tickets as a consequence for not following directions and/or rules that we have been learning and discussing since the first week of school. I appreciate the time you take to encourage your child to do their best at school.

SMALL GROUP READING AND WORK STATIONS

Reading groups went very well last week. I had to give several warnings for not being engaged with their task but the children worked really quiet in work stations. We need to keep that up!

Every week a new unit is introduced in our Whole Group Reading routine. This new unit introduces one new letter sound which serves as the stimulus for all activities that follow. The new letter sound is related to an animal character which gives us our theme that we will be reading and learning about during the week and writing about in the writing center.

Our whole group sound for this week is /th/ as in the word “the”. We will be doing activities not exactly related to “th” or an animal but related to our names.

ACCELERATED READER

Please continue to indicate when your child is ready to test by placing a sticky note on the book they are ready to test on. Right now I won’t let a child test unless they have the note indicating you’ve listened to them read. If children take a test unprepared and make below a 60, it’s very hard to get their Average Percent Correct up. Children can’t exchange books from the library until they have tested on it. Of course, if the book is on their level, but is too hard they may exchange it. I have encouraged the children to look inside the books before they check them out to see if they are a "good fit" book. Books can be kept up to a week without an overdue notice being given. So when your child continues to bring the same book home each night, it’s because they haven’t tested on it or they haven’t asked me to go to the library. Each child now has a library card that they can take to the library with to help them choose a book on their level. These levels will be adjusted throughout the year. Library books should come home every night AND come back to school EVERY day. There is time during our day that they can read, I also think this helps establish some responsibility for the children.

MATH

We completed Chapter 4 and have started Chapter 5. Please complete the practice workbook pages for Chapter 5 for homework this week. Also, remember to look for the Extra Practice and Review page to come home the night before a chapter test. I am thinking our Chapter 5 test will be toward the end of this week, it just depends on how the children do with this chapter.

LANGUAGE -(DOL)

We have covered rules 1-3 and 5 & 6. These rules can be found in your child's take home notebook. The class did really well capitalizing the names of their friends and pets for Rule 6. I will introduce Rule 4 this week, a sentence that asks something needs a question mark at the end. Be sure to look in the Keep at Home side each day for DOL papers ~look over them Thursday night to prepare for Friday's daily DOL grade. Sentences for Friday come from sentences practiced Monday-Thursday.

MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION AND REMINDERS

*Please remember to send in a check made payable to Time For Kids in the amount of $5.00. I am ready to order our magazines for the year. Thanks!
*A BIG thank you to everyone who ordered books from Scholastic. We receive free books for every book that you order. Also, for every parent that orders online our class receives a $4.00 credit for free books. This is a great way to increase our classroom library and for you to increase your home library. Scholastic always has fabulous prices. If you didn't get a chance to order this time, don't worry I will send home Scholastic forms at the beginning of each month. As ALWAYS, Scholastic orders are simply voluntary, there is absolutely NO obligation to order.
*September 15th-30th-Innisbrook Fundraiser - you will receive a packet tomorrow.
*Library Day September 15th- make sure your child brings library book to school.
*September 17 – Teacher Treat Day - This is when teachers are treated to lunch that is provided by another grade level’s parents. Parent volunteers come and take our class to lunch while I get to enjoy lunch with the other teachers, provided by our fabulous parents.
*September 17 - this year our Teacher Treat Days are centered around a theme. Thursday's theme is "Team Day" so we want everyone to wear their favorite team shirt. They may also wear jeans. (War Eagle:))
*September 21 - Blount Spirit Night at Chick-fil-a
*Please be sure to initial daily conduct calendar and reading log EVERY night.


Thanks for the trust and support you have in me with your sweet and precious one. Have a great week!

Hugs!!