Mallen's Monday Memo January 30, 2012

Monday Memo

January 30, 2012

Dear Parents,

I am having a hard time believing it is the end of January already!! What a fast month that was!! It also seems like a fast winter, with no snow for such a long time. I am not complaining, that is for sure!! Thanks to everyone for remembering to send the boots and snow pants with your child to school. We got through our story last week, even with the late starts. The kids worked really hard and they got through everything I had planned.

This week we are starting on a new story about a boy in China. We will be learning some things about China as well as designing a dragon. The story is called The Last Dragon. We will be working on the following skills:  Comprehension, Vocabulary, Questioning Techniques, Note Taking and Adjectives in Grammar. Our Spelling this week will be words with j and s  and the list is attached to this memo.

In Math, we are finishing up on our 4^th chapter, with the test on Friday. We will be working on misleading graphs, problem solving, and reviewing the chapter, this week. Please continue having your child work on their multiplication facts. We will be taking daily timed tests over them. Our daily reviews (buckets) are such a great opportunity for the kids to review previously learned concepts and they are a great preparation for the basic skills tests that are coming up!

We are starting new units in both Science and Social Studies this week. We are moving to the SE region of the United States for our new unit. This week we are going to talk about the Mississippi River  and doing a skills over maps at different scales. We are starting to talk about weather this week in Science and we will be discussing the layers of the atmosphere this week. We will talk about the layer that most of our weather occurs and a little about the effects of acid rain on the environment.

Thank-you for encouraging your children to perform random acts of kindness. Today is the last day that we will be sharing what we did to be kind to one another. I hope they continue doing these random acts but we won’t be sharing every Monday over them after today.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call or email me!

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-4300 ext. 336 (School)  444-4300 (Home)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo January 15, 2012

Monday Memo

January 16, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend! Just a few quick reminders:  Friday is the Coaches for Cancer during the basketball games. Each classroom is challenged to raise money for cancer. The winning class will get a pizza party with the wrestling cheerleaders. What a marvelous thing to contribute to! The contributions are due this week. Thanks to all who have contributed to this very worthy fight!!

We are starting a new reading unit. It is entitled “Problem Solvers”. The stories are of how different characters have handled tough situations! This week we are starting on a story entitled “My Name is Maria Isabel”. We will be working on a variety of skills including comprehension and vocabulary, symbolism, sequencing, and predicting outcomes. For grammar this week, we will be working on the forms of the very be. Our spelling words this week are attached to this memo. With our centers and our guided reading groups, we are pretty busy during this time.

For Math, we are enjoying our Chapter 4. We are working on bar graphs, graphing ordered pairs, line graphs and problem solving strategies. We do daily reviews as well as working on our multiplication facts, each day. Keep working on those facts. Most of the kids have committed them to memory, just a few still need to get them there. They will with practice!

For Social Studies this week, we will be talking about what the Mountain States are like today and then we will be comparing those states to the Swiss Alps. For Science, I am hoping to get our review in and send the study guide home with the students on Thursday, with the test on Friday. I am planning that as of today!

The students no longer have Spanish class. Mrs. Kelley was needed at the high school, so I wanted you to be aware of that. Just a reminder of the early out on Wednesday.

Thank-you for your help with the random acts of kindness!! I enjoy the sharing the students do over what they have done!!

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (home) 444-4300 ext. 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo January 9, 2012

Monday Memo

January 12, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend. I think everyone is getting back into the routine of school again.

I thank-you for occasionally asking the kids about any random acts of kindness they may be doing. We are going to start sharing these on Monday.

For reading this week, we are finishing up on our “That’s Amazing” unit. This week we will be reading two stories, an excerpt from The Borrowers and an article from Boy’s Life Magazine entitled Lord of the Fleas. This week will be about reviewing our grammar and reading skills from the unit. Those include wrapping up the theme, reading for details, vocabulary over the new stories, comparing/contrasting the flea performers in the story, and a total review of action verbs, main and helping verbs, identifying tense, singular and plural nouns, and possessives, in grammar. Our spelling words are a review over some tricky words from the unit and are attached to this memo.

For Math, we are starting our fourth chapter. We tested over our Chapter 5 on Thursday, and I sent home the results to you. We are still doing period multiplication timed tests and for the most part they are doing really well, but a few still need to keep practicing them. We will talk about units of time and elapsed time, problem solving with time, calendars and pictographs this week, along with our daily reviews.

We are continuing to finish up on our mountain region of the United States. We will be talking about the women’s right to vote, and working on some social studies skills including drawing conclusions, and reference sources.

For Science, we are working on earthquakes and volcanoes this week. We will be doing some promethon board activities over these concepts as well as reading some books over these natural disasters.

I sent home book orders last Wednesday. They are due on January 16^th.

As always, with any questions or concerns, please give me a call or an email!!

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:   444-3093 (Home)  444-4300 ext. 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Monday Memo January 3, 2012

Monday Memo

(Tuesday) January 3, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone enjoyed their enormous holiday break!! Without snow, it was easier to go places, but really didn’t seem quite so festive. Just a reminder that when (or if) it snows, the students need to wear their snow pants and boots. I want to thank our room parents for the wonderful winter party they planned for us, before Christmas break. Thanks to Mrs. Noah, Mrs. Boots, Mrs. Smith, and Mr. Gansen!

The kids had a great time and we truly appreciate their time and effort in planning the party!! We were also treated to our student teacher, returning for the party!

We enjoyed going to the care center and playing Bingo with our friends there! The students are absolutely wonderful over there and  all of them have made someone smile while visiting. I am continually proud of how they act while they are there! The staff is so generous with the students, with their prizes and treats for us!

Getting back to the reality of school, we will be reading a story that we didn’t get to that last week of school entitled “Heat Wave”. We will be working on comprehension and vocabulary as well as fantasy/realism, reading a diagram and comparing and contrasting it. We will be working on the tenses of verbs during our grammar time and we will be working on words with ed and ing on them for our spelling words, which are attached to this memo.

We will be finishing our 5^th chapter in math, with our test on Friday. Knowing their multiplication facts, made this one of our easier chapters this year! For Science, we will be starting on earth science. We will begin with the layers of the earth, this week. For Social Studies we are going to be talking about the Shoshone Indian tribe and talking about ghost towns, in the mountain west region of the United States.

For the month of January, I am going to see how this goes. I am going to talk to the kids about doing Random Acts of Kindness and together we will brainstorm a variety of possibilities. Each Monday during Share Day, I am going to ask the students to name at least one Random Act of Kindness that they did that week for someone. It will be fun to see the variety of ways the students have affected another person in a positive way.

As always, feel free to call/email with any questions or concerns!!

Have a great week!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)  444-4300 ext 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us