Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
Last week certainly went by fast!  With an evacuation drill and a field-trip to Mt. Philo, the week just slipped by.  I hope you had a chance to check out the pictures I posted from our field-trip.  Simply scroll down to see them.  We had a great day together and the weather was beautiful.  Thank you parents for coming along.

Writing:
The students love to write!  We are finishing up our beginning unit in writer's workshop in which the students explore the different reasons writers write.  The students wrote about themselves, explored free choice stories and personal narratives and wrote about strong feelings.  They also wrote about our scientific explorations and investigations. Throughout this writing unit, we also used different mentor texts to guide our writing and to get ideas for how to express ourselves. Our next unit in writing will be on personal narratives, which we call "small moment stories." The students will learn to expand on their language and zoom in on a moment in time in an effort to add more details in their words and pictures.  We look forward to sharing our writing with you during the conferences next week.

Reading:
Guided reading groups are continuing in our classroom.  This is a time when the students meet in small groups to share a book on their instructional level.  Each group will work on various comprehension and vocabulary skills. We also talk about specific strategies to decode and understand the text on the word/sentence level.  We ended our initial unit on David McKee's Elmer books with a "Brown Bag Book Share" yesterday.  The student shared their understanding of the characters and problems/solutions in the books while eating popcorn and reading books together.  Our upcoming unit in reading will continue on the importance of active engagement in reading and how readers share their understanding of books in different ways.  We will  learn more about how readers share their books in writing and online.

Parent-Teacher Conferences:
If you and your family did not sign up for a conference for next week, please do so.  I sent out a link to the google doc we use.  Please let me know if you need assistance to sign up or if the times do not work for you and your family.  Your child is encouraged to attend.  We will share all the learning taking place here at school and you will have the opportunity to look at your child's writing and scrapbook.

Upcoming Events and Reminders:

• There is no school tomorrow, Wednesday October 12th.
• Parent teacher conferences are next week, October 17-21.  We have regular school Monday-Thursday.  There is no school for students on Friday, October 21st due to these conferences.
• Please remember to send your child to school with warm clothing each day!  It is getting chilly outside and we have outdoor recess every day!  Thank you.