10-24-07
Dear Parents,
What a great year we are having, I am so proud of the kids, they are really working hard and doing a good job. I was impressed with thier first week of the new reading log and spelling menu I can tell they worked hard. Can you believe the first nine weeks are already over?
Thanks to everyone who will be able to help with our Fall Festival. I know the kids are going to have a great time. I just hope the rain will be over.
Here are some things we have been working on in class:
Reading-The kids worked and worked on thier fluency to publish a great collection of audio books for our 1st grade book buddies. We posted the MP3 files on the network so our buddies can have access to these audio books from any computer in the school. We recorded over 60 books of their adopted reading program and our buddies shared it with all of the other 1st grade teachers for thier kids to use also, our 3rd graders are very proud of the work that they did and how much it will help the first graders. They will be presented a community service award (if approved by Ms. Fenton) at the end of the year for thier efforts.
Continue to make sure your child is "sticking with a book" at home. We're still practicing text to text connections and we will begin text to world connections soon.
Writing-We have been working on collecting ideas for writing in our binders and adding detail to our writing pieces. Sticking to a topic will continue to be a focus. Next week we will begin collecting memories to put into a memory book. We will explore different ways to write about these memories. Please help the kids send in memories as often as possible starting next week. They will be glued into a book so if you do not want to part with original pictures, just print a copy and send that in. No bigger than about a 4x6.
Science-We have been learning about the human body and all of its systems. So far we've learned about the skeletal system and our muscles. Next week the Body Trek will begin for our entire school. We had an orthodontist come in and speak to us and Evan's mom will share her knowledge with us next week.
Math-We are still working on multiplication, the kids have compiled lists of things that come in groups and made multiplication riddles with them that I will compile into class books for each child to solve. Next week we will begin skip counting by 2-12 and look closely at patterns in each table.
Technology-The kids have thier emails up and running! They have emailed thier epals in Italy and the teacher said they are working on responding to us. I've just realized that in order to email the kids, you must have an epal account, the kids really want parents to email them so if possible, please log on to www.epals.com and set up an account so that you can email your child. I have already gotten several emails from them and it has been really fun! I have stressed to them the importance of editing before pressing send, especially to our epals in Italy who barely speak English.
I showed the class this link today: http://kidspeak.podbean.com/ where a class of 5th grade students made some "how to" videos of some "fun stuff" to do on the computer. We plan on making our own help videos similar to these very soon.
Sincerely,
Tanya Constantine
Important Dates:
Sites of the week:
Our tech coach's page: http://www.teacherstone.com/3-5links.htm
Our computer lab home page: http://www.quia.com/pages/labs.html
Practice keyboarding from any computer: http://www.nimblefingers.com/
Just some October fun! http://www.dedge.com/flash/hunt/scavenger.html
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