Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We had another busy and productive week in our classroom.

In reading, the students continued their work in guided reading groups.  Most guided reading groups are still reading fictional stories, which allow us to dig deeper into various comprehension tasks while focusing upon reading strategies to help us with fluency and accuracy. We continued making personal connections to the characters and the events.  We also learned how to use our new "Reading Response Menu" in class.  This is a collection of reading responses that they students choose from as they read their books. The menu gives the students options how to respond to a book, or what thinking task to do.  For example, the students can choose to write in their Literacy Book, read the book to a friend to work on fluency, show their understanding of the book in a picture, or give the book an award.  If the student chooses to give the book an award, he/she will name the award and justify why this award is given.  We currently have 5 stations open and we will open more reading response tasks next week.  We love our reading menus!

In writing, the students had a very special treat this week when the author David Martin emailed us and asked us to vote on our favorite endings for a book he has not yet published.  David Martin is currently developing two new characters, Gertie and Gus.  They are very funny.  I have worked closely with David Martin for many years and he has shared many un-finished and unpublished books with my students.  This was, however, the first time we were directly involved in the writing/editing process.  What a treat!  We look forward to seeing this book in our library and our book stores soon.  If you want to explore david Martin's website, I have linked it here.  It is also linked on our school web-site under Author Links.

This week, we also had another 4 Winds class.  We learned about leaves and their characteristics.  Here are some pictures from our workshops.  Thanks again parent volunteers for providing these science classes to our students.  We sorted the leaves based on their characteristics, we created artistic leaf bugs and we colored them.

Lastly, below is a list of reminders:

• Please return the purple permission slip for our upcoming field-trip to the Flynn on November 18th
• We are going to the WCS Book Fair on November 12th in the morning.  This is a time for students to browse books, and write a wish list for you if they wish to return and buy later in the evening.  If you want, your child can bring a small amount of money (we usually recommend $5-10) to buy a book. Tax will have to be paid as well and sometimes, as you can imagine, it can be very difficult for a child to understand why a book cannot be purchased with $5 even though that is the price on the book.  Thank you for discussing this at home with your child.  We will talk more about this in school as the Book Fair nears.  We only buy books in school.  If your child wants to buy pencils and posters, for example, we encourage parents to return in the evening.
• Next Tuesday, our rotating related arts switches to Guidance with Ms. Tatlock.
• We still have PE on Wednesdays and Fridays. Sneakers please!
• We are integrating more technology into our classes every day.  If your child did not bring in his/her own head-phones to use, please bring them in on Monday.  Let me know if you need help getting these.  It is so much better not to share head-phones and the classroom is so much quieter when we use our head-phones.  Thank you!
• Don't forget to check out KidBlog again this weekend for another challenge!

Have a great weekend!

Maria