Weekly Update

Dear Families,
I cannot believe we are already in December!  It feels extra strange because the weather is still so warm and there is no snow on the ground.  Please know that our last day of school before the holiday break is on December 22nd.  That is a full day. The students return to school again on January 4th.

Upcoming Events:
Team Harmony will host a breakfast gathering on our team so families and teachers can mingle and chat before work.  It is scheduled for December 17th between 7:30-8:30am.  We will be in our kiva.  This is a potluck breakfast so we are asking parents to contribute goodies.  If you would like to donate some items, please access this document to sign up.  Thank you.  We hope to see you then!  We also sent information about this breakfast social in your child's Friday folder.

Harbor House is hosting their annual Fun Night at WCS.  Information about this special event and how to sign up is also inside your child's Friday folder.

Our Learning:
This week, we started a new author study.  We will read books by Helen Lester in the next couple of weeks.  She is the author of the "Tacky, the Penguin" books among others.  We will continue to dig deeper into story elements, such as character traits, setting, problems and solutions.  We will also read a book about her and learn more about the author as a person.  We are making a connection to this in our writer's workshop as well.  The students are in the process of publishing their small moment stories and they are now writing a page called "All about the author" to accompany this book.  We hope we can learn new creative ways to share information about ourselves from Helen Lester!

The students accessed google drive today to start typing their "All about the author" pieces.  Google drive is accessed through email, but we will not be using email at this point.  The children were asked not to use it yet as I would like to build some common expectations and understandings of digital safety before we communicate freely with each other.  Please follow up at home about this.  Thank you.  Some children already asked if they can work on their author pages at home.  Yes, of course.  Your child's email address is firstnamelastname@cssu.org and the password is the same as the one already shared for Typing Club.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Speaking of Typing Club....I have re-set some names and checked on our account.  This what we should do from now on:
1. your child's username is his/her first name only, spelled with capital letter as a starting letter and full, formal name.  In other words, if your child's nick name is Ben, but his first name is Benjamin, his sign in would be Benjamin.
2. password is the same as before (which was emailed earlier).

Thanks for your patience in this!  Happy typing in drive and in Typing Club!

Best,
Maria