It's going to be a great year!

Thanks so much to everyone who was able to make it to Parent Night. Welcome again to our 3 new students and their families joining our class, Izzy Ingle and Jonah Davidson, who both were at SSC last year and Gabriel Hernandez who went to Trace last year. We are so glad that they are a part of our class! If you were unable to come, please send in an index card with 3 goals that you would like to see your child meet this year. Also, the parents left a short "love note" on desks, you can tape/write one in your child's agenda for a surprise. :) I forgot to mention that we will still do a parent letter, it will be every 2-3 weeks instead of every week this year. When they go home, it will be on a Friday and will be written in agendas. Remember to write your child back and continue to discuss with them "friendly letter format" and sticking to the topic.

Hindsight! I guess I should have sent out this poll before, but I just thought of it and I'm interested in knowing how you felt about parent night being paperless this year. It will help me make the decision for future parent nights.  :)

One last thank you to everyone who helped over the summer! I really can't express how much it helped. Mrs. Carroll did the beautiful decorating on our door and the walls outside of the classroom. Mrs. Busby helped with cleaning the room, and many of you lugged the kids back and forth to help put our library back together!

One of the questions raised was about the order in which math would be taught. Here is the pacing guide I will  be following for this year:

August
Fluency Check and Assessments,  Data Collection/ Graphing, Telling Time/ Elapsed Time
September
Multiplication
October
Multiplication and Intro to Division
November

The Number System

Addition and Subtraction of whole numbers and decimals
December
2-D Geometry and measurement
January
Fractions and Decimals
February
Division of Larger numbers
March
Review and Test Prep
April
Probability, changes over time, patterns 
May
Final assessments, reinforcing 4th grade concepts

Computation of all operations (+,-,x,/) will be practiced throughout the year.


Just a little bit about what is going on in class: Reading-We are reviewing strategies that we learned last year, setting up our reading notebooks and I am in the process of assessing each student's reading level. Talk to your kids about strategies you use when reading, making mental images, re-reading, making connections, predictions, etc.  Continue to make sure your child is "sticking with a book" and reading on his/her just right level. Writing-We have been working on collecting ideas for writing in our notebooks and adding detail to our writing pieces. Sticking to a topic will continue to be a focus. We are beginning by collecting summer memories and writing rough drafts. We will explore different ways to write about these memories. Please help the kids send in memories as often as possible to add to our "ideas section" as writers begin by drawing on their prior knowledge. 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. Math-We will begin with data collection, graphing, telling time and elapsed time. I will be giving the kids a beginning of the year assessment for the purpose of showing growth trough the year. Content-We are beginning the year with a study of the Age of Exploration! The kids are enjoying discovering why these men set sail to explore our world, what they discovered, and how it all connects to where we are today. Technology-We have been very busy in technology already! The kids are using Spelling City to practice their spelling words, they will continue to work on their web pages, we will begin blogging about books we are reading, and yes, continue the old fasioned keyboarding practice on Dance Mat Typing and other online sites and that's just the beginning! Technology is everywhere, constantly to talk to your children about online safety and digital citizenship!

  Useful Sites:
Our Parent Night document is on this link, scroll down: http://tconstantine.wiki.hoover.k12.al.us/Welcome

Good sites to practice multiplication facts.

Thanks so much to everyone who manages to find time in their busy schedules to volunteer. Mrs. Lee has signed up for room parent but would love one or two others to sign up to help with the job. Don't forget to join our book club, it's on the "other ways to volunteer" link: http://tconstantine.wiki.hoover.k12.al.us/Volunteers

  United Streaming(username-tanyaconstantine, password-united): http://www.unitedstreaming.com/ - A great site to learn more about just about anything that your child wants to study.  Just be careful that they stay with grade level videos if they search on their own. If you type in Magic School Bus in the search area, your child can watch ANY Magic School Bus video.