Thursday, December 18, 2014

Newsletter 12-18-14

Parents, 

We’ve been busy during this time before winter break.  We started unit three in Reading Street: "What does it mean to be creative?"  Our first two stories were Pearl and Wagner and Dear Juno.  Our comprehension focus has been on author’s purpose and drawing conclusions.  Our language focus has been on verbs. 

We are learning opinion writing in this unit.  We practiced when we wrote our friendly letters to Santa.  We told him that we had been nice this year and gave him three points of evidence.  We also wrote our opinion about our Anansi story this week. 


Since we learned about faraway places in our language unit, Jack and his mom spoke to our class about living in Cambodia.  We learned so much about the culture as we heard stories, looked at pictures, and touched real objects.  What a great experience! 

We also had a guest speaker teach us sign language, another form of communication.  She taught us the history of sign language, and we learned several signs.  We learned the alphabet, and the students will get a page to bring home tomorrow so they can practice their names over the break. 

We finished our unit on mental subtraction and have moved on to addition with regrouping.  Please have your child continue to use Reflex Math over the break.
 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in our room!  We have done some fun writing activities, centers and art projects to help us enjoy the holidays.




We appreciate all the kids who brought in change for Quarters for Christmas.  Our school earned over $800!  If you can give your child some opportunities to count money over the break, it will help so much when we get to that math unit later in the year. 

It has been so much fun to see students present their tradition reports this week.  They have done a fabulous job!  Thank you for helping your child with this.  All of the students need to present to the class by Friday to get a grade.  Remember, their reports can be about any tradition you do as a family.  They do not have to be a holiday. 

Today your child brought home a book order page with a free book coupon.  If you would like to redeem the coupon, you may order online by December 30.  You will be able to choose from Lucky, 2nd Graders, or any other book orders.  You can also search for favorite books. 

Thank you so much for the gifts.  Also, thank you to our fabulous volunteers who have helped us so far this year.  Have a wonderful winter break! 

Kristen Adams
kristen.adams@canyonsdistrict.org