It has been so great to meet with all of you this week and share the exciting learning happening in our classroom. Thank you for your continued interest and involvement in your child's education. During our conversations, some areas emerged and were discussed that I wish to areas that I wish to clarify to all parents. First, your child is only responsible for the weekly reading log and math homework. We do not send home additional homework (in the traditional sense that needs to come back to the classroom and be checked by the teacher), but provide many additional resources on the school web-site for parents to access. All of these sites are hyper-linked in our classroom blog sidebar. Thank you. Second, your child might have brought home additional thinking queries and comprehension tasks specifically related to our author studies or reading response tasks. These are voluntary. Some children love the added challenge of these tasks. They do not need to return to the classroom. Thank you. Lastly, I am delighted to hear that the students love to write in their reading logs. I have definately noticed an amazing amount of writing! I am so happy to hear that your child loves this assignment every week. In an effort to provide additional resources and choices for parents and students, I have created additional reading logs on the wiki. You and your child can choose from a variety of reading logs. You do not have to use the one inside the reading log if you do not want to. Browse the choices on the wiki (Click here to access directly), or create your own. Some children like the challenge of simply writing on any lined paper. Other children prefer to write on other days. I understand that you and your child have commitments outside of school. If Mondays, Tuesday, and Wednesdays do not work for you, encourage your child to connect his/her writing and reading on 3 other nights. The wiki will have these logs as well, if your child wishes to see it in writing. Thank you all again for being so incredibly supportive and encouraging. Next week, I will also send home a list of suggested writing topics for your child. I wish to have this discussion in class and have the students themselves generate these choices. They are such terrific thinkers!
This week, the students accessed a program called wordle online. The url is www.wordle.net The kids love this site. If you have any time at home, please encourage your child to access this incredibly creative program at home. Your child will show you how it works! Amazing.
Being on Team Harmony means so many things....but one of the most rewarding aspects of our incredible team is our unity and process of team-building. Every day, your child has the opportunity to play, interact and learn with children from all of our classrooms. Many times, the children play in our Kiva together. They explore math, draw, write and read together. Sometimes they spell and share writing pieces together. Sometimes they use our blocks and build structures together. Here is a wonderful exxample of this. This structure is wonderful in so many ways. What do you see? What do you think it is? Do you think mathematically and look for shapes and patterns, or do you think creatively and see farms or gardens? Please respons, if you'd like.
Once again, thank you for all of your incredible support. I am very fortunate to have your child in my class.
Regards,
Maria
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