Thank you

Dear families,
First, I want to thank you so very much for  coming in today to participate in our reader's theater performance and holiday party.  It was a huge success.  Second, I want to thank all of our wonderful children who work so hard every day.  They did an amazing job, reading their scripts in front of everyone.  Please tell them again how proud we all are.  They are truly amazing kids.
I hope you will all enjoy a restful and relaxing holiday break with your family.  School starts again on January 4th.  Until then, take care and thank you for supporting our learning in so many ways.
Maria

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
This newsletter is filled with interesting and fun upcoming activities.  Please remember that we are on school holiday break next week, from Wednesday December 23rd to January 1st.  School resumes again on Monday, January 4th.

Upcoming Events:

On Thursday morning, December 17th between 7:30am and 8:30 am, Team Harmony is hosting a breakfast gathering for families.  This, we hope, will be a great opportunity for us all to spend some time together while enjoying some special breakfast treats.  Please come and join us for a early morning social hour!  Thank you to those who have already signed up to donate foods and items for this party.

Our Thursday morning breakfast will also provide an opportunity for all of you to meet my new student intern.  Her name is Laura Sullivan and she is a student at St. Michael's College.  She is pursuing her teaching degree and will spend time with our class next semester.  She will join our class full time when we return from break and she is scheduled to be with us until April break.  We are excited to have her join our class.  Please come in on Thursday to meet her!

Thursday is a busy day for us.  Team Synergy has planned a new school-wide celebration because the children filled the BeeHive again!  They have planned a special "Stop, Drop and Play" activity for our school.  This will happen at the very end of the day.  We look forward to this celebration.

Traditionally, Team Harmony celebrates the last day of school in December with a Pajama Party and a movie.  I am happy to announce that we will do this again this year.  Please encourage your child to come to school in his/her Pjs on Tuesday, December 22nd.  Please note, however, that we cannot bring in any stuffed animals or wear slippers.  We will have Related Arts and recess on Tuesday, so please make sure your child is dressed for outside play as well!  We will watch the movie "Polar Express" together on our team.  I will provide popcorn (Smartfood) to the children.  Each child will get a bag, but if anyone is willing and able to donate large ziplock bags, I would greatly appreciate it.  Please let me know if your child does not like popcorn (Smartfood).  It would be great if your child has a bottle of water as well as the popcorn tastes a little salty.

In the afternoon of Tuesday, December 22nd, the students and I would like to invite you all to our end-of-the-year celebration.  This year, we hope to perform our Reader's Theater plays.  We also hope to have some goodies and treats for everyone to enjoy after the performances.  If you are willing and able to donate foods to our party, please let me know.  I feel bad asking for this again as we just asked parents to bring in treats for our breakfast gathering.  Thank you for understanding and thank you for being so generous with your time and money.  For our party on Tuesday, December 22nd, we would like the following items:
cups
plates
napkins
muffins
cookies
fruit
juice
crackers
anything else that the children might like!

We hope to start our Reader's Theater performances at 1pm.  Hopefully, you can join us then!

Thanks again for all that you do to support our learning!
Best,

Maria 

Guest reader

We had Nancy Radley, our Reading Recovery teacher, join our class this afternoon as a guest reader.  Nancy read another Tacky the Penguin book to us.  Thanks for joining us. 

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