Weekly Update

Dear Families,
I am sure you have heard by now....we have completed our movie and we are on the school YouTube account.  We are very excited to unveil our school song video.  We could not have done this project without the help of Linda Scott, our Technology INtegration Specialist.  If you see her around our school, please say "Thank you".  I have linked the video under "Songs" on our wiki, which you can also access here.  It can also be accessed here with this url:
http://youtu.be/xdWUjfx5kRQ

We are so proud of this movie!

We have the ABS Harvest party next week.  If you wish to volunteer and help contribute vegetables for the soup, please read the letter from our school gardener and let him know when you can come in.  Students must bring their own utensils for this special event.  It is okay to bring them in on the same day, but I encourage you to send in a bowl and spoon the day before.  We can always keep the utensils inside your child's desk.  Thank you.  We hope to see you there!

In writing, we continued working on our "All About" writing pieces this week.  The students also had a chance to use a camera and take pictures of their topic for our school book "A is for Allen Brook".  This is the book we are writing with our school librarian, Denise Wentz.  I will contact parents who indicated they were interested in volunteering in our classroom sometime tomorrow or over the weekend.  We hope to start this exciting research project next week.

In reading, the students continue to respond to the literature in different ways.  As most students still immerse themselves in non-fiction books, we continued to explore vocabulary and backing up our thinking with evidence from the text.

In this week's Thursday folders, your child brought home unfinished writing pieces. Since we already finished our Launching unit in writing, and started the "All About" non-fictional writing, the students cleaned out "old" pieces to take home.  If your child wishes to finish these at home, please do so.  This is a class filled with aspiring authors and we never throw any writing out.  Writing is a process that takes time to perfect.  We have a movie to share about this as well.  It should be done sometime next week.

This week's Thursday folders also included Dolch lists for 1st and 2nd grade.  I included these for you and your child because some parents indicated in our parent conferences that these would be helpful.  Some students are working on recognizing these in print; others are working on learning how to spell these words.  Some suggested ideas for your child to do, is to go on "Word Hunts" during reading time.  Your child writes down one or two words that he/she wishes to search for during reading and every time the word appears in the text, he she writes it down on a piece of paper or index card.  We also love rainbow spelling!  Ask your child to explain.

Lastly, this week's Thursday folders included information about our new "Bee Wear" at ABS.  If you wish to purchase a T-shirt or winter hat with our school motto on it, you now can.  You can even donate to someone else.  Let's Bee Kind!

Thanks again for supporting our learning!

Maria