Weekly Update

Dear Families,
We had a fun-filled week together with many extra activities.

First of all, a police officer from the Williston Police Department visited our school.  He visited all the teams and read the book "Officer Buckle".  We talked about how we can be safe at home and at school and the children created their own safety tips and badges.

Later in the week, another police officer visited ABS and brought a working police dog, Casko.  The children prepared a question, which we asked in the gym.  Ask your child to share what we learned about working police dogs. Here are some pictures from that assembly.

This week, we started working on fluency when we partner read.  The children received individual packets of short stories and poems to help them focus on aspects of fluency.  We call these packets "Personal Readers".  The children learned that fluency is reading so that your voice sounds just like it does when you speak.  In other words, your voice goes up and down depending upon what the context is.  This week, we practiced paying attention to punctuation and re-reading poems and shorter texts so we can read words quickly and with automaticity.  They did a great job!

This week, we also went to WCS to see the 3-4 Chorus Concert.  It was wonderful to see our "old" friends from last year and siblings.  I hope you had the opportunity to attend their evening performance.  They are so talented.

We also have a very exciting week coming up.  This week, we will celebrate the 100th day of school.  It is on Wednesday, February 11th.  If your child wishes to create a 100th day project at home and bring in to share, it would be great.  This is not required, but completely voluntary.  Last year, some students showed the number 100 with groups of 10, using paper clips, pom poms and even candy!  Other children decided to write 100 different number sentences for 100!  If your child wishes to create a 100th day project, please bring it in on Wednesday to share.  We usually create a little museum for 100 in our classroom.  We will also do many extra activities to celebrate this at school.

We will celebrate Valentine's Day in our classroom on Friday.  We will have our celebration earlier in the day so our skiers won't miss this party. If your family would like to donate some goodies for our classroom celebration, we would greatly appreciate your generosity.  We need plates, cups, cookies, muffins, juice and other treats.  Thank you in advance for helping us celebrate Valentine's Day in our class.  I will send home a class list in your child's homework folder tomorrow if your child wishes to hand out Valentine's Day cards to their friends.  Please make sure your child brings in enough for all students if he/she decides to participate in this exchange.  Thank you!

Thanks again for supporting our learning!

Maria