1-7-08

Dear Parents,

Spelling will look a little different this nine weeks. There will be less words but the kids will be responsible for knowing the spelling and the meaning of the words. Our class work and homework should be practice enough but they will also be written in agendas incase you would like to review with your child.

We are also doing DOL (daily oral language) this nine weeks. We will go over this in class and have a quiz on Fridays, but you are welcome to ask your child to bring it home at any time, just make sure it is returned the next day.

Instead of our Daily Math we are solving glue and do’s or daily word problems and number talks in order to continue to practice computation and problem solving. Although we are finished with our multiplication unit, we will continue to work on speed and fluency with each table.

This week we will practice 3's and 6's. We are beginning a unit called Combining and Comparing which will strengthen our subtraction and addition skills, a seperate letter will come home explaining more about this unit.

Our read aloud is The Tale of Despereaux by Date DiCamillo. I downloaded it from itunes and since I have never read this one, we will be listening to it together, I've heard it's wonderful. I have also found that I need to work on my listening skills, I do better when I am reading the book myself! We are also doing an author study on Faye Gibbons, ask your child about the books we have been reading and how their similarites tell us so much about this author.

The kids are finishing up a project on the computer comparing elephants and mammoths, each group has produced a Power Point to share their findings. We are also learning how to use a digital camera and sync pictures with our computers to be used in projects. When we finish studying Native Americans, Mrs. Stone will be team teaching with me for a unit of Simple Machines. She will be helping us to integrate technology into this unit, we're excited about her working with us!

We have a field trip to Vulcan at the end of January, more information will be coming home soon.

Thanks and again, have a wonderful 2008!

Tanya Constantine

Important Dates: http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=2bcvmamhc3752ej4tsltk671sk%40group.calendar.google.com&title=Mrs.%20Constantine

Site of the week: http://www.gdbdp.com/multiflyer/play_online.html another great site to practice a certain table or mixed facts, the kids know how to get to each.