Mrs. Willow's Fabulous Firsties

Dear Families,

We have a special guest speaker scheduled for Monday to talk about life in a forest.  This goes right along with our year long science goal of learning about life cycles.

Our class has 20 votes and is holding steady in 3rd place for the School Supply Gift Certificate Contest! Thanks for your support! Teachers with the top three votes win between $100 and $300 gift cards. Click here for contest page

Have you “liked” Holt Elementary School on facebook?  There are helpful reminders, cute pictures and opportunities for volunteering on the site.

Speaking of websites…

Here’s Holt’s site

Here’s my classroom website.    Lots of good information and links to free learning resources for your firstie.

MATH:  We are wrapping up our unit on adding strategies and word problems.  Students should quickly be able to recite the 11 ways to make 10.  We started math workshop which is a time for students to work at their specific level on math skills on their own, with partners or with a teacher supported small skills group.  One rotation is a self-paced math review program called IXL.  It’s excellent!  I am sending home log in information and passwords.  It can be accessed from home to give your child some extra support in math.  This program is review and practice.  There is no instruction.  My rule is that if a child misses three problems in a row, they need to STOP and ask  for help.  We are also full force into our calendar program where students practice their money, time telling, place value, counting by tens and fives, months of the year and days of the week skills.

READING:  We are identifying story elements (characters, setting and plot) and decoding words with short u sound as we read stories about zoos.  Our reading workshop is going spendidly.  Students are divided into five skill-based groups that rotate  doing activities based on their reading goals.  Last week I introduced Raz Kids, this is a wonderful on-line reading program where students can access a huge library of books at their reading level.  They can listen to the story, read the stories aloud, record themselves reading, take quizes and earn stars that can be used to create rockets and robots.  They can do this ANYWHERE!  There’s even an iPad or tablet app.  Like IXL, it prints reports that you and I can access to see how students are doing. Log in details for RAZ and IXL are on purple papers in this week’s Monday Mailer.  Please keep these papers somewhere safe so you can access these awesome resources from home to boost your child’s reading and math skills.

WRITING:  We are working with adjectives (color, number, shape and other words that describe nouns), writing stories about fall, pumpkins and what we love and why, improving handwriting and speed of writing, capitalizing first letter of sentence and proper nouns, using end punctuation and finger spaces.  If your child is struggling with handwriting, I am sending home an at-home handwriting book.  Please have your child do a page a day on school nights.  This will help students learn to properly write letters and improve their speed and neatness.  Please sit with your child to make sure that s/he properly uses the triple lines on the primary paper.  I call the lines the sky (top line), fence (dotted center line), ground (bottom) line and basement ( line beneath bottom line).  Students who need extra practice need to correctly situate letters on those lines, use proper strokes and improve writing speed and neatness.  If you ddn’t get an extra handwriting book, that indicates that your child’s handwriting is fine.

SOCIAL STUDIES  AND SCIENCE:  Liquids and their attributes.  All about of spiders, bones and pumpkins.  Doing self reflections as we prepare for conferences.

HOMEWORK:  Memorize “stache” words (sight or high frequency words) or Fry’s list of words if your child is in my HEXAGON reading group, practice little books (CIRCLE, TRIANGLE and RHOMBUS reading groups) if they are sent home, read with your chld for 15 minutes at least 5 times a week.  Color in October reading calendar.  If you have lost or misplaced yours, here’s a link to a new one.  Remember that students earn a FREE new book and a personal size pizza if/when they turn in their calendar at the end of the month.

SAVE THE DATES!

10/23:  Fall Color’s Spirit Day!  Students show school spirit by dressing in fall colors.  Holtoberfest (6-8 pm) Costumes and carnival style family fun in the evening.  Volunteers and candy donations appreciated. You may buy your tickets ahead of time to avoid the lines.)  I’ll be there in costume selling tickets and helping out.

10/27 Field trip to Herrick’s Farm and Pumpkin Patch. We have the maximum number of chaperones. Thank you!

10/28:  Conferences 3:30-7:30

10/29: No School due to conferences 7:30-7:30

10/30:  No school

Thanks for your support and cooperation!

Leah

(541) 790-6126

My class website/blog has important information, newsletters, photos and helpful links to resources.

http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/willow_l/

“Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.” ?Martin Luther King Jr.