Monday Memo
February 13, 2012
Dear Parents,
I hope everyone had a great weekend! We had another busy week last week. Our book Harris and Me was due on Friday. I challenged the students that if they passed 4 RC quizzes during the month of February, I would give them a bag of popcorn. They are required to pass 2 for one of their comprehension grades. I have several who have already read and passed 4 quizzes. I love that motivation. We read a book at school from Andrew Clements entitled No Talking and on Thursday we challenged ourselves to follow the rules of that book. It was quite interesting. You could only say 3 words at a time and use gestures, sign language, nodding and notebook writing, to communicate. I think the kids had a lot of fun with that and realized that sometimes when you take the time to really think about what you want to say, you end up realizing that it really wasn’t that important to say. You actually spend more time listening and I thought that was an interesting lesson.
This week and next, we are at the end of our reading unit and will be working on two stories this week and on poems for next week. Our spelling words are review words this week and our grammar lessons are reviewing over the forms of the verb be and adjectives. We our reading some short stories about real individuals who solved some problems in their life, during our guided reading time. Our centers will also be reviewing previously learned concepts. We have an exciting addition to our classroom. You may remember the old SRA kits that you had as a kid. Well, they are so much better than they use to be! They are filled with rich literature and are so colorful! It is a great skill for the kids to work on their comprehension skills, enrichment skills and most importantly, they are working on their independent working skills. They are thrilled with them! They have a correcting buddy, who corrects theirs and hands it back to them for corrections… I have a folder for each student that I will share with you at conference time. Ms Jenison and I are sharing the kits, so we each have them every other week. I think it is a great addition to our reading materials, and I hope it is another thing we can do to help the students excel on their basic skills tests.
In Math this week, we are working on our new Chapter 6. It involves multiplying 2D by 2D numbers and problem solving. They learned last week how to make organized lists. That was kind of interesting! We will continue working on our math reviews. This week we will also be multiplying money.
For Social Studies, we will be continuing on our exploration of the Southeastern United States region. We will also continue talking about rocks and minerals during Science. If we had our daily oral science and daily oral social studies, we do keep busy each day!!
We are going to the care center today for a Valentine’s party with our friends. That is something we always look forward to!
I thank the room parents for the party they are putting on for us tomorrow!! Thanks for all your time and effort. The kids appreciate it so much!!
Sincerely,
Chris Mallen
Phone: 444-3093 (Home) 444-4300 ext. 336 (School)
Email: chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us
