News From Our Classroom

     I would like to thank Mary Scanlon for coming into school last Monday to help our class construct "Jack", our baseball loving, football-fan skier scarecrow.  Thank you to everyone who contributed something to our special friend.  He was a big hit, both with our class and with the other students at the Coyote Coupon Celebration for September.      "Jack" is the "guy" is in the middle.  : )

 Thank you, Mary, for all of your help, and for letting me continue with my teaching while you helped the kids create!  Thank you to all of the families who sent in materials to help "build" Jack, too.  We couldn't have done it without you!

         It was a short week, since there was no school on Friday due to the Teacher Workshop,  and we had our fun Coyote Coupon celebration on Thursday mid-morning.  Thanks to Mary, I was still able to meet with my reading groups each morning, so by the time I assessed the kids on their sight word knowledge on Thursday morning, all were able to pass their assessments. Yeah!!!! Great job, Kids!  And Congratulations on obtaining 300+ Coyote Coupons during the month of September!

        Mrs. Steven and I spent time during Math class this past week assessing students on their number sense.  All of the practicing we have done on the rekenreks, using ten frames and dot patterns are making the identification of amounts happen without having to count all of the time.  We are starting to recognize amounts just by the patterns they form.  We will finish the assessment battery on Tuesday, and start spending time on addition beginning on Wednesday.  

        We began a new unit of study in Social Studies last Thursday.  This unit will involve three parts: learning the cardinal directions of North, South, East and West (and an introduction to the intermediate directions of Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest);  memorization of the seven continents and five oceans; and finally, activities to help the children learn to "read" maps, and create their own maps.  That's a lot to cover in three weeks, so I could use your help.  I am sending home with this newsletter a simple copy of a "world map" listing the various continents and the oceans, as well as another that copy that is not labeled.  Please use these two papers to help your child "study" the locations of the various continents and oceans. He or she does not need to be able to write the labels where they belong, but just simply to point to the correct locations when given the names of both the continents and the oceans.  Practicing these locations for 5 minutes each day, along with what we do in the classroom, should be enough to allow your child to pass this test.  Thanks for your help.  We will do most of the mapping work in class.

        This coming week will also be a short one--since Columbus Day is a holiday,  there is no school on Monday--even for me.  We'll get in as much learning as we can during available time.  And then  Grandparents' Day will give grandparents a chance to see what we are doing here at school during their visit Friday morning.  Grandparents' Day will take place from  9:00 to 10:30 this coming Friday.  We will also be visited by the Bethel Fire Department on Friday afternoon.

         That's all for this weekend, Folks.  The important date for this week is the opportunity for Grandparents to visit our school and see their grandchild(ren) in their daily learning environment.  Please join us for the morning.

         14   Grandparents' Day  9:00 - 10:30 a.m.