See you at curriculum night this Tuesday, Sept. 25 

     6:00-6:45 pm: Grades 1 & 2 parents in classrooms

     6:45 – 7:00 pm: Staff intros and Parent Group (PTO) presentation in gym

     7:15 – 8:00 pm: Grades 3-5     Please come to meet teachers in our classroom and hear about our exciting new year!

Homework:

Mme Shelli’s Class: I alternate weeks between English Word Study & Math review practice for homework, so this week students will have math review homework Monday through Thursday from my class. One row of the homework is to be completed nightly and brought to school each day to be corrected together in the classroom. Note, this week has a few optional problems that kids may try if they wish. I estimate that English/Math homework should take less than 15 minutes per night.   If your child needs more than 15 minutes or struggles on a type of problem, just write me a brief note on their homework, leave it blank, & I’ll help them in class.  This should be a no-tears type of homework. 🙂

Mme Jana’s Class:  We begin French vocabulary homework this week. The first night’s homework is to rewrite the words in print (les caractères d’imprimerie), writing the letters that make the sound “ou” in red, so I hope everyone can provide a red colored pencil at home. NO PEN IS TO BE USED ON HOMEWORK PLEASE, EVER. Tuesday evening, they rewrite the word in cursive, Wednesday night, they attempt a sentence, and Thursday night, you give them a quiz as prep for the in-class quiz on Friday. (If you have a French-speaker or an older student learning French in the home, they are a good person to administer the quiz. If not, your student has used the word repeatedly all week, so should know his/her vocabulary good enough to know what words you’re saying.) Homework is to be completed nightly, Monday through Thursday, and brought to school each day to be verified in the classroom, just that they did it, not that it’s got to be 100% correct. Also, a parent needs to initial the homework each night at the bottom of the column to show that you are aware if your child did his/her homework or not. I don’t believe in a lot of homework, so this homework shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes of their best efforts. And please, no tears over homework – from parents or students! Here is a copy of the homework:  ou Vocab

Important Dates:

Oct 8-19   Read-a-thon week

Oct. 11-12  NO SCHOOL for students.  Teacher professional development.

Oct 19    School pictures &  Health Screening

Mme Jana’s News 

FLA (French Language Arts):  I’m still working on reading and writing evaluations, which I need to complete to form reading groups. We will begin reading groups next week.

We worked on cursive (lettres attachées) handwriting Monday through Thursday of last week, and will do so weekly until we get through all the lower case (minuscule) letters, then we’ll use the same schedule to tackle the upper case (majuscule) letters.

We also conjugated the verb “avoir” (to have) which was review for most students, we discussed subject pronouns (les pronoms sujets) and we worked on the sound “a.” This week’s French vocabulary homework involves the sound “ou” like in soupe.

We also are well into our “Moi” project, where the students use a format to write in French about themselves, their families and their interests. They then write the text in cursive, then write it once more in cursive in a final draft. Most students are on the final text in cursive and some are onto decorating the circles that then are glued around the text. It’s a lot of writing, and those will go up in the hallway. Once completed, the students are deservedly proud of the effort they put into their work.

Les sciences:  I finished grading the science pre-surveys, and am making science groups today, which also involves moving the desks around, and I promise we’ll begin studying Energy (Énergie) this week!


Mme Shelli’s News

English Language Arts:  Students learned to write a strong summary of fiction text over the last few weeks.  This week, we’ll be reading some traditional stories, tall tales, and folktales. Again, students will be summarizing, but also we’ll be identifying theme or messages in traditional tales, hyperbole, and idioms in various fiction texts.

Math:  This week we will wrap up  unit 1: Place Value through the Millions. Students have been practicing rounding and comparing numbers through the millions. This week, students will review and practice addition and subtraction of multi-digit numbers with regrouping (carrying and borrowing). You can help at home by reviewing with your child  the basic addition facts (1+1 through 12+12).  Here’s are some simple games to try at home. You can learn more about this unit at the Math Curriculum link above. Here are a few links to videos of lessons similar to ours: Adding with standard algorithm   Subtracting with standard algorithm