Mallen's Monday Memo February 1, 2016

Monday Memo

February 1, 2016

 

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Well, our day off last week put us behind so we will be playing some catch up this week. I have a couple of reminders. We dismiss early on Wednesday at 1:00 for our inservice. I would also like to invite you to the KC Spelling Bee that will be held this Friday at Jacobson at 4:00. It is always a fun event for the kids and I encourage them to come and try out their spelling skills. I have given them permission slips and practice spelling lists. They will need to either bring those permission slips to me or they can bring them with them to the event. I look forward to lots of participants!!

 

Our story this week for our problem solvers unit is entitled “The Last Dragon”. It is the story of a boy who is visiting Chinatown with his aunt. While there, he sees an old dragon costume in a window. The story is about how he finds people to help him bring this dragon back to its former glory. We will be working on the following skills this week:  Comprehension, Vocabulary, Story Structure and the use of context clues. The grammar skills are over adjectives this week. My plan is to be testing over last week’s words today and then the pre-test for spelling this week’s words will be tomorrow. The test will then be next Monday. Weather depending…

 

I gave the students their new book Misty of Chincoteague. They are to read a chapter each night and I read the next chapter the following day. For some, this is a more challenging book. I appreciate your willingness to read with your child a chapter a  night, if needed.

 

We are studying volcanoes and earthquakes this week in Science. Ask your child to name the layers of the earth.

We are also reading a few stories about earthquakes and volcanoes.

 

For Math, we are continuing on our multiplication problem solving with area and perimeter. Have your children keep working on their facts so that they are memorized. That will help them enormously with this problem solving unit. We keep working on our daily reviews and our daily multiplication practice.

 

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

 

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  Home:  444-3093   School:  444-4300 Ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo January 25, 2016

Monday Memo

January 25, 2016

 

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I think everyone was thrilled when they finally got to have outside recess on Thursday!! They were ready for the cold to go away!! I thought they did a nice job of handling their indoor recess! They used inside voices and got along with each other very well! This week we have Mrs. Streigel, our library lady to look forward to on Tuesday. We also have Counselor Johnson on Wednesday! Hopefully the weather will stay cooperative this week!!

 

Our story this week for our problem solvers unit is entitled “Sing to the Stars”. It is the story of how a little boy overcame his shyness when in front of a crowd of people.  We will be talking about the following skills throughout this story:  Vocabulary, Comprehension,structural analogies, and working on some concepts associated with good health. Our grammar skill this week is using adjectives and comparing with them (using er, est, more and most). Our spelling list is attached to this memo. Each of the students has a library book for their RC book this week. A few chose to read Skylark as their next book and it is one of my books. I love the fact that many have read more than one book for this two week period. They need to have one book tested on by January 29^th. Again, thank-you for having them read 15 to 20 minutes each night and signing their planners to verify that!!

 

We finally got our Social Studies test taken on Friday. I sent it home with the kids. We are starting on our new Science unit on Volcanoes and Earthquakes. It is always one of the kid’s favorite units! We will be reading a variety of books over this topic.

 

For Math, we are continuing on our multiplication problem solving with area and perimeter. Have your children keep working on their facts so that they are memorized. That will help them enormously with this problem solving unit. We keep working on our daily reviews and our daily multiplication practice.

 

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

 

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  Home:  444-3093   School:  444-4300 Ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo January 18, 2016

Monday Memo

January 18, 2016

 

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend. We learned a lot from our library lesson from Mrs. Streigel. They are learning how to use the AEA Library Online page. Such a great resource for the kids! We also had Counselor Johnson this week. She has been talking to the kids about the different types of bullying. The kids earned their PBIS reward and so they were treated to a movie on Friday morning. It was also National Hat Day, which made it fun for them to be able to wear hats for the day!! Just a reminder that this week we are dismissed at 1:00 for our teacher inservice.

 

Our story this for our problem solvers unit this week is entitled “Marvin of the Great North Woods”. It is the story of a 10 year old boy who has to live with a group of loggers in Minnesota due to an epidemic in his hometown. We will be talking about the following skills throughout this story:  Vocabulary, Comprehension, Questioning Techniques, and Note Taking. Our grammar skill this week is over the use of irregular verbs. Our spelling list is attached to this memo. The students were to have Sarah, Plain and Tall read by Friday, January 15^th. Many of read the first few books in this delightful series. Those that passed the quiz, got their new RC book, which was their choice of a library book. That book needs to be completed by January 29^th. I will give them a new book at that time. Keep having them read for at least 20 minutes each night!! Hopefully if they always do that, it will become a life-long skill for them!!

 

We didn’t get our social studies chapter finished in time for a test last week. So, the plan now is to send home the study guide on Tuesday, with the test on Wednesday. We will start on science again after the test..

 

For Math, we are continuing on our multiplication problem solving with area and perimeter. Have your children keep working on their facts so that they are memorized. That will help them enormously with this problem solving unit. We keep working on our daily reviews and our daily multiplication practice.

 

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

 

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  Home:  444-3093   School:  444-4300 Ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo January 11, 2016

Monday Memo

January 11, 2016

 

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend. We are back into the swing of things. The students enjoyed the Star Lab that was set up here last week! It is always a neat experience for the students to have the opportunity to view a glimpse of our solar system! This week we have our counselor time on Wednesday. We will also be dismissing at 12:30 on Friday, for the teachers to get their grades finished for second quarter and end of semester. It is also “National Hat Day”, so we are encouraging the kids to wear hats on Friday!!

 

We are starting today on a new unit in reading entitled “Problem Solvers”. This unit is about people who had a problem to solve and the process they used to solve that problem. Our first story is entitled “My Name is Maria Isabel” and it is about a girl who is very shy and has a problem that her teacher doesn’t pronounce her name correctly. This story is about how she handles this situation. We will be working on the following skills this week:  Vocabulary, Comprehension, Predicting Outcomes, and Making Inferences.  Our grammar this week is about the verb be. Our spelling words are attached to this memo.

 

Our social studies this week is the next chapter over the Southeast Region. I will be sending home a study guide on Thursday, with the test on Friday.

 

For Math, we are now officially beginning our multiplication unit. The students really need to have those facts memorized, so please encourage them to work on them at home. The program uses the idea of area and perimeter to help understand the concept of multiplication, within problem solving. Again, they really need to know their facts for success to occur. We also continue to work on our daily review and our multiplication page.

 

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

 

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  Home:  444-3093   School:  444-4300 Ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo January 4, 2016

Monday Memo

January  4, 2016

 

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a very relaxing Christmas break! I want to thank our awesome room parents for the terrific Christmas party they put on for us:  Amy Bates, Amber Hill, and Christine Johnson. I truly appreciate their time and effort in putting a party together for us!! That week we also got to play Bingo at the Care Center with our friends. As always, that was a great deal of fun!! I encourage the kids to stop over and visit their new friends if they have a chance! They love their company!!They are so very good to us!! Just a reminder that this week we dismiss at 1:00 on Wednesday for our inservice time. We enjoyed our movies on Friday, as well as the games and cocoa that we had during our specials time. It was a fun day!!

 

Here we go, back into it. We are starting a review over our “Amazing Stories” theme. We will be reading two short excerpts. Each of the excerpts come from fun “amazing” stories. We will be reviewing our grammar and spelling skills as well as reviewing the skills we learned during our reading time. Our spelling list is attached to this memo.

We are working on our second module in Math. This module has us working on conversions using the metric system. We also do a daily review and a multiplication sheet each day. Keep working on those important facts each night.

 

Our social studies this week is the next chapter over the Southeast Region. Hopefully, we will be able to test over this chapter by the end of next week.Just a reminder that on Mondays, the students will be bringing home DOGS (Daily Oral Geography) that will be due on Friday. They can use any resource to answer the few geography questions. Those that hand it in on time, have their names on it, and get it perfect, will be in a drawing for a prize each Friday. Thanks for looking for that and helping with that!

 

For Math, we are now officially beginning our multiplication unit. The students really need to have those facts memorized, so please encourage them to work on them at home. Most are there, but I need all of them there! It will be so much easier for them if they have that done!! We finished our second module. It had a lot of problem solving of up to 3 step problems. It was tough for them. Mostly, once they took the time to read it and think about it, they found success!

 

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

 

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  Home:  444-3093   School:  444-4300 Ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org