Monday Memo
January 10, 2011
Dear Parents,
I hope everyone had a great weekend! I want to start and thank the room mothers, Mrs. Branstad, Mrs. Sander, Mrs. Kuhlers, and Mrs. Hovden for the wonderful Christmas party they put on for the kids!! Just a reminder that the book order is due tomorrow. Also a reminder that the students need to keep reading each night for at least 20 minutes. We are continuing our reading incentive months. This month is Star Teacher month. I have challenged them all to read each night for 20 minutes as I do. We are using the reading counts book points for the books they pass, as our reading incentive challenge. The students will find out at the February reading incentive assembly who are two winners for the month are. Keep up the reading!!
We have begun a new unit in reading entitled “Problem Solvers”. With that, the students will be reading biographies for their genre this month. Each student has a biography to read and test over and then can read what they wish for the month, once they have read the biography. The theme concerns how people have solved different problems in their life and their experiences along the way. So many of our biographies they are reading, show exactly that, how people have overcome their problems and become great people because of that. We will be working on a variety of skills this week. During grammar we will be focusing on irregular verbs. Our spelling words this week involve words with the final e dropped. We will work on vocabulary, comprehension, note taking and some health related words this week. For our centers we will focus on vocabulary and working on our typing skills as well as a Successmaker skill lesson this week.
During Math, we are working on multiplying by multiples of 10, 100, 1000 on our new unit packet. We will also be working on estimating products, mental math, and using arrays to multiply, this week. Along with our reviews and our occasional timed multiplication tests, we are busy during math!!
Using primary and secondary sources of information will be a skill we will work on during social studies this week. We will also be talking about the immigrants in the west and recognizing frame of reference, during the week. We are starting to get to the end of our Western Region of the United States.
In Science, we are working on Rocks and Minerals. We are doing a lot of vocabulary with our unit. We do a lot of it on the prometheon board and have occasional quizzes over the material we have learned. The students really tend to enjoy this unit as so many of them love to collect rocks!
Again, just a reminder that the book orders are due tomorrow and to have the students read each night for at least 20 minutes!!
Have a great week!!
Sincerely,
Chris Mallen
Phone: (Home) 444-3093 (School) 444-4300 (ext. 336)
Email: chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us
