February 23, 2015

A note from Mrs. Tabor…

      Hope that you all had an enjoyable week!  Your children were very excited to see each other today and share their experiences.  As you may know this pushes our last day of school to Wednesday June 10^th.  Other important dates are listed below.

       Thank you so much for all of the wonderful Valentines and for your help with the party.  Everyone was so proud of their mailboxes that they created, and they were equally excited to hand out their Valentine cards.  I love to see their expressions as they hand me their cards and gifts.  Also, thanks for all your help in bringing in donations for the Animal Care Society. There was quite a bit collected; I’m sure the Animal Care Society will be pleased with our donations. 

      More importantly, thank you to the Lonnon family for their work on our class quilt.  I’ll send you all a picture tomorrow.  Mrs. Lonnon and her mother did a wonderful job, and it looks fabulous!

            As you may have noticed, several things came home today in your child’s folder.  We are taking a trip to the Muhammad Ali Center on March 5^th.  Parents are welcome to chaperone, but must ride the bus (district policy).

We will watch the movie “Ruby Bridges”.  This is rated PG, so we need your permission to allow your child to watch the movie.  Last, an at-home project came home with your child today.  Each child chose a person that we studied in our unit “Journey to Freedom” for their project.  The due date is next Friday, March 6^th.  I will not assign any other homework next week, but I thought that you may need extra time to assemble the materials and research needed to complete this project. 

            Last, report cards are coming home the second week of March.  If you feel that you’d like a conference to discuss your child’s progress,  I have posted times available on volunteerspot.com. The link to my sign up is http://vols.pt/KEzLxA.

Dates to know:      February 26^th: Picture Day (this is the full person picture)

                                                            February 27^th: Field trip forms due

                                                            March 2^nd: Dr. Seuss Day: Wear pajamas!

                                                            March 5^th:  Ali Center Field Trip

                                                            March 9^th, 11^th, and 12^th: Conference times

                                                            March 11^th: Report cards go home (2^nd trimester)

 Reminders

*Each week’s word work lists are available for students to practice on Spelling City. The link is: www.spellingcity.com/sheritabor

*Send in a healthy snack and water bottle every day!

*Now that the weather is turning colder, please make sure your child comes to school with a coat, hat, and gloves.  There have been many days recently where students have come to school and not been prepared for outside recess.  Our recess is at 10:00 or 10:30am, and we will go outside unless it is below 32 degrees (with the wind chill factor). 

*Be sure to sign and return your students planner every day! Don’t forget to record their reading!

What are we learning?

 Reading Workshop

This week we will continue our fifth ELA Unit, A Long Journey to Freedom. We will continue to practice reading aloud poetry to work on our fluency, which means reading smoothly, pronouncing words correctly, using the appropriate rate, having voice with expression, and reading with punctuation in our voice. We will continue to practice our Shel Silverstein poems. We will also practice our fluency with Reader’s Theatre scripts pertaining to the Civil Rights era. At the end of the week students will perform their Silverstein poems for a fourth grade and kindergarten class. We will schedule our Class Poetry Slam for the first week of March.

Writing Workshop

In Writing we will continue to write our book reviews. Students have been working on 2 paragraphs; a summary of the book and a paragraph explaining three reasons why someone else might enjoy this book. We will also create our own pretend presidential advertisements.

Word Study

This week’s words are: Different, really, hurt, without, mean

Individual word lists can be found on SpellingCity.com

Math

In Math we will continue to look at how to add using the partial sums method. This method breaks apart the ones, tens, and hundreds in each number and adds them together before getting a total sum.  We will also learn about regrouping in addition and then work with subtraction using base ten blocks.

Social Studies

In Social Studies we will learn about Ruby Bridges and Cesar Chavez. Both of these people were influential during the civil rights era. We will discuss why each person was important to creating equality for all. At the end of the week we will watch the Ruby Bridges movie. The students are so excited to see it. Please make sure to send back their green permission slips before Thursday.

Related Arts Schedule

Monday -Tuesday	Wednesday-Friday
Technology	Art