September 8, 2017

Happy Friday!

It was great to have so many people join us on Wednesday, for Parent Information night.  If you were not able to make it, we included a booklet in your child's Friday Folder that includes all of the points we discussed.  If you have any questions about the booklet or anything this year, please do not hesitate to contact us. 

You will also find the school photo packet in this week's folder.  School picture day is Friday, September 15th.  If you would like to order photos please include all the information and payment in the envelope and return it to school.  You do not need to wait until the 15th to send it in, we can hold all order packets for you.

Classroom Curriculum Updates

Writing Conventions:  Each morning students complete short exercises that help build their accuracy with writing conventions. This work includes capitalization, punctuation, grammar, spelling, analogies, etc.  Examples of this work will begin coming home in Friday Folders next week.  When your son or daughter writes at home, please support them by holding them accountable for what they know in regard to skills that have been taught and reviewed in class. 

Math: Students have investigated 2-D shapes and their attributes. We've been focusing primarily on polygons such as: squares, rectangles, rhombus', triangles, trapezoids, hexagons, pentagons.  Today, students were introduced to new geometry vocabulary.  We will work on understanding these terms throughout the year as we revisit geometry concepts.  We also began reviewing the addition and subtraction relationship and facts.

Discovery: Over the course of the last two weeks, we have spent our Discovery time building our classroom community and settling in with routines.  Beginning next week, we will start our geography unit.  Stay tuned!

Reading & Writing Workshop:  We have been concentrating on establishing routines and practices for our workshop time.  Each workshop begins with a focused mini-lesson on a particular skill or strategy.  The bulk of our workshop block is then spent reading or writing.  During this independent work time, Mrs. Christy is conferring with students.  Workshop wraps up with a sharing time at the end of  each session.  

Our current reading unit is entitled, "Building a Reading Life".  We are focusing on practices of choosing just right books, sharing books with others, reading with fluency and accuracy. These are important transferable skills no matter what age a student is!  We have read many books together that are helping us build our community of readers, writers and thinkers.  Some of our recent shared books are:  The Invisible Boy, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, What if Everybody Did That, The Golden Rule, Wilma Unlimited, Each Kindness, Author, A True Story   

Our current writing unit, "Crafting True Stories" focuses on narrative writing.  We are concentrating on being "storytellers" rather than reporters, and writing with voice that encourages our readers to come along on a journey with us.  Students are also zooming in on "small moments" and telling those stories well, such as instead of writing about the whole day at the fair, zooming in on one particular ride that was extremely exciting.  A huge part about becoming a great storyteller in writing, is to practice telling stories orally.  We encourage you to tell stories to and with your children! 

Kindness Project:  We're getting organized to complete our first CC3-Kindness Project of the year.  We like to do something each month.  We're going to focus on doing something to support hurricane relief.  Stay tuned!


Late Arrivals and Early Dismissals: Each day in CC3 is pretty well planned and jam packed with classroom happenings.  Our active teaching day begins as soon as buses arrive at about 8:45 and we teach up to the last bell at 3:30.  If you can help us out by having students to school on time, and avoiding early dismissals that would be great.  We honor every minute we have with students, so if they are late or leave early it makes the beginning and end of our day more challenging.  Thanks so much!

Have a wonderful weekend!