Mallen's Monday Memo January 28, 2013

Monday Memo

January 27, 2013

 

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend!! I think the kids really enjoyed going bowling last week! I also think they got really tired of indoor recessJ Hopefully it will warm up a bit soon and they can go back outside. Map testing begins this week and I don’t think we will be starting until next week. I will put more about that in my next memo.

 

This week in our “Problem Solvers” unit, we are reading a story entitled The Last Dragon. It is the story of a little boy who sees a puppet dragon in the window and the lengths he goes through to restore it back to its former condition. The students will be working on a variety of skills throughout this story including:  Comprehension, Vocabulary, the prefixes pre, con, com, drawing conclusions, following directions, and the suffixes ful, less, and ly.  Grammar this week has us working on adjectives. We have covered a few parts of speech so far this year:  Nouns (and the different kinds of nouns), Verbs (and the different kinds of verbs) and now we will start learning about adjectives and how they can improve our writing… Our spelling words this week have the final /j/ and /s/ sounds and the list is attached to this memo.

 

We are going to be working on multiplying 3D x 1D numbers this week, choosing a computation method, and multiplying money. Now I think the students are understanding why it was so important to learn their multiplication facts! It sure makes their life easier in math, to have those memorized. Again, thank-you for helping them with those!

 

We didn’t get as far with social studies as I had planned last week, so this week on Thursday, they will be taking home their study guides for a test on Friday. Next week, we will see how Map Testing goes. Our next region is the Northeast Region and we will be talking about rocks and minerals in Science.

 

Upcoming Event:  KC Spelling Bee:  February 8 at 4:00 in my classroom. The spelling lists and entry forms are in my classroom.

 

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

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)  444-3500 Ext. 336 (School)

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

Mallen's Monday Memo January 21, 2013

Monday Memo

January 21, 2013

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend and Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday!

Speaking of him, we are going to be doing a little of activities involving this great hero of ours. 

 

This week in reading, we are in our unit on problem solvers. We will be reading a story about a little boy who has to live away from his family due to health issues. The story takes place in the early 1900’s. He has to work with people who don’t speak his language and are quite a bit older than him. It shows how he was able overcome all of those obstacles and succeed. Talking of Martin Luther King Jr. and many famous African Americans during those times, works quite well into our problem solvers theme. We will also be working on a lot of skills over this story including, comprehension, vocabulary, questioning techniques, note taking and a health link over winter survival.  Our grammar this week is over irregular verbs. Our spelling has us working with words with a final e on them.

 

For Math, we will be starting our new unit on multiplying with 2 and 3 digits. We tested over our chapter 4 on Friday and I sent the results home with the students. If all goes right, we will be finishing our social studies unit this week, with a study guide going home on Thursday night for a test on Friday.

 

I realize this is a rather short Monday Memo, so I will just take this moment to let you know that I am really happy with the way the students are progressing. It is showing in their test scores, SRI scores… Keep having them read 15 minutes a night (or more) as it is the greatest way to see progress on their SRI and it is excellent practice in the area of reading. All of them have tested over The Jacket and are on their second book for the month. Many are on their third or fourth book. Keep that upJ Unfortunately The Diary of a Wimpy Kid book that I gave some for Christmas doesn’t have a quiz yet because it is so new. So, today at library, those students are going to pick out a book (some already have one) to read for their second book. On February 4, I will be giving the students a Sharon Creech poetry book that is really fun to read. That will cover the poetry genre. It is also an RC quiz book.

 

As always, please call with any questions/concerns!!

 

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 14, 2013

Monday Memo

January 14, 2013

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a nice weekend! We really worked hard last week and accomplished so much!!  We finished our “Amazing Stories” unit in reading. Our final test for the unit was on Thursday. I sent the results home with your child. Our new unit is entitled “Problem Solvers”. The stories are about people who have overcome difficulties to become very successful in life. Our first story is entitled My Name is Maria Isabel. This story is about a girl who has a difficult problem to solve.  We will be working on the following skills this week:  Vocabulary, Comprehension, prediction, discussing the genre of realistic fiction, words with the suffix –ible, using commas correctly, and writing an opinion. Our grammar lessons this week are about the forms of the verb “be”. Our spelling words are words with the /k/ sound spelled ck, k, or c and words with the /kw/ sound spelled qu and words with the /ng/ sounds. The list is attached to this memo.

We are finishing our 4^th chapter in math this week, with our test on Friday. This week we will be looking at misleading graphs and problem solving. We will be doing a lot of review this week to prepare for Friday’s test. We will start our 5^th Chapter on Monday.

In Science, we will be finishing up on our Earthquakes and Volcanoes unit. A study guide will go home with the students on Wednesday, with the test on Thursday. I will also be sharing some of the books I have about Earthquakes and Volcanoes. For Social Studies we will be continuing to learn about the Southeastern Region of the United States. This week we will talk about Colonial Williamsburg and then discuss how a new government was built.

The end of our second quarter is today. So hard to believe we are at the second semester point already!! Time surely flies!!

I hope you have a great week!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

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

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

Mallen's Monday Memo January 7, 2013

Monday Memo

January 7, 2013

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! I would like to thank-you so very much for thinking of me this holiday season. I truly appreciate the extremely generous gifts I received from you. I also want to thank-you for having your child work on the “Pay it Forward” concept. It was awesome hearing the stories of how they helped others… We placed 4^th in the food pantry “contest” with 72 items of food brought. That is fantastic and such a help to the food pantry!! We also were able to give money to the cheer fund which resulted in a very kind thank-you from them that was shared with the students. Hopefully they all felt the joy of giving at some point during their Christmas holiday! We also enjoyed our time at the care center. We played Christmas Jingo with them and I think the kids and the residents all enjoyed their time together. We will be going back around Valentine’s Day. I want to thank Maria Vara’s mother and Deserea Abele’s mother for the wonderful Christmas party they threw for our class! The students had a great time and I appreciate the time and effort put into planning and putting on the party!!

This week we will be working on a variation of the Cinderella folk tale. The title is Cendrillion. We will be working on the following skills for this story:  Comprehension, Vocabulary, Suffixes, and using the pronunciation key. We will also be listening to a variety of other countries’ versions of Cinderella and making some sequence posters over those stories. I sent the spelling list home with the students last week. Our test over those words will be on Thursday. Our grammar this week is over helping verbs and their role with action verbs.

In Math this week the students will be making graphs, working on median, mode and range, using the data from surveys, and how to read misleading graphs. For Science this week we are working on Earth Science. We will be discussing earthquakes and volcanoes. We are also working on the next chapter of the Southeastern Region of the United States.

Just a reminder that we have a teacher inservice on Friday. I sent book orders out on Wednesday. They are due on January 15^th. I also gave each an Andrew Clements book entitled The Jacket. It needs to be tested on by January 15^th. I gave them a reading counts book for Christmas that they can read when they finish The Jacket and they can add that to the two books read for the month!

Have a great week!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

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

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