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Sunday, January 1, 2012

Weekly News: January 3-6

Happy New Year and welcome back to school! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year with family and friends!

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO READ THIS ENTIRE SECTION AS THERE IS A LOT OF NEW INFORMATION!

Beginning after the holiday break we will now have each student write his/her first and LAST NAME on all papers, homework, etc.  If your child does not know how to write his/her last name, please practice this at home (it can become part of homework writing!). Each student will now have last names written on their NEW GO Folders and name tags for support in the classroom.

Also beginning after the holiday break each child will have a “bank” attached to his/her new GO Folder. The “bank” is a ziploc baggie taped to the GO Folder. Each day your child will have the opportunity to earn money at the end of the day - the money will replace the stickers! Students will receive a penny for staying on yellow and green for the day. Students will also have the opportunity to receive nickels in the classroom as rewards throughout the day. Instead of Treasure Box on Fridays, now they will visit the BANK! Each student will count money, trade money (example: five pennies for one nickel) and have the opportunity to spend their money on the items that are now “on sale” in the treasure box. Of course bigger treasures will cost more money, which I hope will reinforce self-control and teach students about saving. Each child will be responsible for keeping track of their own bank and for counting the money in it. (This too will be great homework practice). Please encourage your child to take care of and keep track of his/her bank, as lost banks and/or money WILL NOT BE REPLACED!  Also, if students forget GO Folders at home, they will not receive money for that day. The bank is designed to teach responsibility and accountability as well as reinforce math skills. This is a great life skill your child will benefit from in the future!! Thank you for your continued support.

As promised, we will be testing students this week on sight words, letter teams, and numbers. Our 100% CLUB will be announced on Friday. There will also be a special prize for the student who has read the most on RAZ KIDS over break!

NO SCHOOL Friday, January 13th and Monday, January 16th.

Winter Electives begin this week!

What Are We Learning This Week??:

Sight Words: WORK, ALL, AWAY, JUST, US.

Letter Team: WOR (the OR sounds like Mr. ER, like in work and word) and TION (sounds like SHUN like in vacation, invention, connection).

Reading: This week we will continue to practice making connections as we read. We are practicing text to text, text to self, and text to world connections. We will also remember use our schema before, during, and after we read. This week, we will read books winter and our poem “I’m a little Snowman”.

Writing: We will continue to use our "Writer's Checklist" - a list of things that all good writers do, such as proper punctuation, uppercases at the beginning of a sentence and name, finger spaces between each word, spelling word wall words correctly, adding details, making sure our writing makes sense, and trying our best! We will read this checklist everyday to make sure we are applying each of those skills in our writing. We are working on writing three to four good sentences on one topic.

Math: The students are doing well with the  MATH TIMED TESTS. I have seen so much improvement.  Keep practicing addition facts at home 5 to 10 minutes each day or more if your child is struggling.   Students are timed on addition skills and move up levels at their own pace. We will also continue practicing the addition "DOUBLES" in our fun DOUBLES SONG. Notice there is a copy of the DOUBLES song on the GO Folder for your child to practice at home. The goal is for students to memorize all the double facts. Please practice these at home.  Please also work on basic addition facts at home. We will practice the directions right and left.  Please continue to reinforce this at home.

Leadership: PERSEVERANCE.

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