Monday Memo
February 6, 2012
Dear Parents,
I hope everyone had a great weekend. It did look a little more like winter this weekend, but what a January we had! It was nice to have a full week of school last week as we were able to accomplish all of our goals for the week. I want to let you know that your child can make their Valentine box this week and bring it to school Monday for Tuesday’s Valentine’s party. I thank the room parents for the planning they are currently doing for our party next week!! We are not allowed to send home the class lists of names, so I won’t be sending that home with the kids this year. I guess it is a privacy law. I can tell you that we have 22 students, if that would help at all. The students can start bringing their Valentines on Monday.
This week in reading, we are reading a story entitled “Sing to the Stars”. It is another of our problem solver stories and it has a problem and how the character goes about solving the problem. We will be working on the following skills: Vocabulary, Comprehension, Story Structure, Analogies, and in grammar we will be working on using adjectives and elaborating with them. Our spelling words have the VCCV pattern in them and the list is attached to this memo. I am excited to tell you that our school has purchased SRA kits that we will be starting this week. I will be using them on some students more than others, but find that they are an excellent independent activity for students to work on their comprehension skills. I have also challenged the students to read their usual two books for the month, but for those that read and pass at least 4 RC quizzes, I will be giving them their own bag of popcorn as a prize for doing that!! I have a couple students who passed 0 quizzes in January and that hurts their comprehension score for third quarter, so I am hoping this incentive will help them to bring up their grade!
In Math, we tested over our 4th chapter on Friday. I sent the tests home with the students. This week we are starting on our 6th chapter which is on multiplication once again. This week our lessons will be with multiplying multiples of ten, estimating products, using arrays to multiply large numbers, and making an organized list. Continue working with the students on their multiplication facts, and this chapter should be very easy for them. We will continue with our daily reviews and timed multiplication tests as well.
We are working on the Southeastern Region of the United States. If you have any artifacts from this region, please feel free to send them with your child to share during our Monday Share Day time. This week we will be talking about the Mississippi River and the warm weather and the cash crops this region produces. Just to write the words warm weather brings a nice thought to my mind…
For Science, we are starting a unit on Rocks and Minerals. Last week I had written that we are going to start on weather, but we are going to continue with the earth theme and work on rocks and minerals. I told the students that if they had some rocks to share and could identify if they were metamorphic, igneous or sedimentary or if they could tell us what kind of rock they were, they could share them also during our share time. I tend to get a lot of polished rocks, and rocks they pick up on the ground on the way to school, if I don’t put limitations on their sharing… We only have so much time…
I hope everyone has a great week! As always, feel free to call me with any questions or concerns!!
Sincerely,
Chris Mallen
Phone: 444-3093 (Home) 444-4300 ext. 336 (School)
