Monday Memo
August 31, 2015
Dear Parents,
I hope everyone had a relaxing weekend! We have one week
under our belts! I am truly enjoying getting to know your children!! They are
very inquisitive and keep me on my feet!! We have been learning a lot of different
things and I know it can be an overload! I think that as time goes, things will
get easier for them.
In Reading this week, we will be finishing up on our
story “Akiak” that we began last week. It is a great story about a dog that is
an important member of an Idiatrod race. I think the students enjoyed it very
much. We worked on a variety of skills including comprehension, vocabulary,
predicting outcomes, and cause and effect. The plan is to test over the story
tomorrow. We will start a new story this week entitled “Grandfather’s Journey”.
It is a great story about a man who was born in Japan and then moved to the
United States, and moved back and forth due to the love of both countries. Our
first unit in Reading is entitled “Journey”. All of the stories the students
will be reading will involve some type of journey. It is a fun way to start our
reading for the year! We will be working on a variety of skills with this story
including: Vocabulary, Comprehension,
Writing in a response journal and using a word web. Our spelling words this
week are words with short and long i and o. Grammar this week will be over
subjects and predicates. Last week we learned about the different kinds of
sentences. We also will be working on SRA which are great little stories with
questions and skills that are at the student’s reading level.
We are working on place value with our New York Engaged
Math program. I have a huge favor to ask of you. We will be doing a
multiplication fact sheet every day. The students really need to learn these
facts! If you can work with your child 5 minutes each day on those, it will
really pay off for them. If they don’t complete the fact sheet, it will be in
their yellow folder to complete and return. We also work on a daily review each
day. This review helps the kids retain skills in all areas of math! If they
don’t finish that in the allotted time,that may be something you will see in
their yellow folder that needs to be completed and returned. Everything we do
for New York Engaged Math, will be completed at school! I will send home the
completed sheets for you to look at. Again, PLEASE try to come up with 5
minutes a night to focus on multiplication facts!! The pay off towards learning
them, will be huge in the future!!! Thanks for your part in helping your child
with their math skills!!
We alternate science and social studies. We are doing
science right now. Our first area of science is life science. We are talking
about classification of living things. We have talked about the 5 kingdoms of
living things and how we classify the different types of animals and plants
that we have. We will have our first science test next week at some point. I
will let you know details via next week’s Monday Memo which you will receive
next Tuesday!
Every day we devote a period of time to computer skills.
We will also do some interactive science activities during that time. Our
librarian is going to come monthly and work with the kids on some resource
based websites. We are excited for this opportunity for the kids. We will also
have our Counselor Johnson time two times a month. She is still working on her
schedule.
Thank-you for your help in making sure your child reads
each night. By signing your planner, you are verifying that they read for their
allotted time. If it isn’t signed, I have them read for 15 minutes during
recess to make sure that they read every day. I truly appreciate you helping
them with that and with their multiplication facts!!
Thank-you for sharing your child with me this school
year!! I look forward to the learning opportunities that await all of us this
year!! As always, PLEASE call with any questions/concerns you may have!! I like
to really tackle any problems right away and I don’t always see everything that
is going on…
Have a great week!
Chris Mallen
Phone: 444-3093
(Home) 444-4300 ext. 336 (School)
Email:
chris.mallen@bkcsd.org
