November 28, 2011
Dear Parents,
I hope everyone had a great holiday break!! We enjoyed visiting the Belmond Care Center last Monday! The students did a great job of performing our Thanksgiving poems for their new friends! They followed that with a color sheet and conversation. They are so good to us over there and we all look forward to our next visit in December!!
I appreciate that the students finished the book The Jacket. Most of them passed the test. They are also finished the book Sarah, Plain and Tall. We took the RC test and a paper test over the story. We also did a daily quiz, that just helped make them accountable for their reading. Many failed the quizzes. It has helped me see that they need to continue being monitored with their independent reading. We will continue with that and it also makes them realize that they need to read for a purpose, not just look at the pages.
We are starting a new unit this week, in reading. It is entitled “Amazing Stories”. These stories are under the fantasy genre. Our first story is entitled The Stranger. We will be working on comprehension, vocabulary, noting details, compound words and structural analysis of words. During our grammar lessons, we will be working on action verbs this week. Our spelling words are compound words. The list is attached to this memo. We will be working on the following centers this week: Vocabulary Center, Successmaker, Language Bucket, Fusion Writer, Poetry Center. Each of the students was given an RC book to work on and have finished by December 2. Let’s keep up the reading!!
During Math this week, we will be working on finishing our Chapter 3. We will be testing over this chapter on Wednesday. We are going to skip to Chapter 5 to continue with our multiplication/division. With that, they just need to have their facts memorized. Keep working on those, as we are taking daily multiplication tests.
We will be working on the nervous and digestive system this week. We have covered the skeletal and muscular system. We worked on the circulatory and respiratory system as well. We are getting there. We have an awesome video series that includes quizzes… and does a great job of showing how the systems work together.
We are on the Mountain Region of the United States. We will be talking about the crops in that region as well as the mining that goes on in the mountains, this week in Social Studies.
I want to briefly talk about Christmas this year. I would love to do a “Pay it Forward” type of theme for this Christmas. It would be great if the students could work on giving of their time to help another. I know their care center friends would love a visit from them, maybe after school… Another possibility is helping a neighbor shovel their sidewalk (should we get snow…). Maybe they could bake some cookies and deliver it to a neighbor. The list is endless. With that concept in mind, if they could possibly bring $2.00 to school, I would match what they bring and we would get an ornament from the Cheer Fund tree. I am also planning on ordering some extra books to give along with that ornament, to be given to kids that may need some books… I would also like to start a box of items for the food pantry. I would love to have our box be filled with taxable items like toilet paper, soap, toothpaste… anything you would like to give. I will have a box available in the classroom tomorrow. Thank-you for your help with this. These are such special, caring kids and would do a great job “Paying it Forward”.
Have a great week!
Chris Mallen Phone: 444-3093 (Home) 444-4300 ext. 336(School)
Email: cmallen@frontier.com
