Oct. 24

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. This morning everyone was bursting with stories to share! I am looking forward to Halloween, and hope to see many of you next Monday. Here are a few things we will be working on this week....
Reading: We are talking about making inferences as we read ("Reading between the lines" to discover what the author is saying). When reading at home, ask them questions and discuss what they are reading.
Math: We are continuing to practice our addition fast facts and we will begin adding 2 digit numbers.
Writing: We are just finishing writing our scary stories. It has taken a little longer than I anticipated, but the writing the students are producing is looking really great. I have been so happy with how hard everyone in class has worked. Tomorrow we are going to have a little sharing party and read our stories by flashlight.  We will then be moving into writing some Halloween acrostic poems.

On a less academic note, we had a little dance party in our class today for Conner's birthday. Your kids love to move! I wish you could have seen them-hilarious! I love spending my days with them. Let me know if you have any questions!

Miss Jensen

Oct. 17

It was fun seeing many of you at the carnival on Friday! Our class has got some great dance moves! This 3-day week is going to fly by. Because of the short week, there will be no new spelling words. Take this opportunity to practice high frequency words. I have noticed that the words most frequently missed on our spelling tests are the high frequency words-the most important ones. In the coming weeks, I am going to be making an effort to really focus on those. Your help at home would also make a big difference.
Here are a few things we will be working on this week...

• Finishing up writing scary stories
• Creating and performing Halloween puppet plays
• Finishing our paper airplane experiment. We will keep you posted on what model flies the farthest.
• Continuing to work on place value

I hope you all have a wonderful UEA weekend!

Oct. 10

Hello Parents!

                  It was so great to meet with you last week! Your help at home definitely affects how our school day runs.  I so enjoyed learning more about you and your families, and what makes your child who they are.

                  I also learned that the blog is not the best way to keep some of you informed about our class. If you would prefer an emailed or hard copy update of our class each week, let me know! I would be more than happy to send something home-like this note-in our Monday folders.

                  Coming up this week:

Math: We are working on place value and breaking down numbers into ones, tens and hundreds

Reading: We are working on recognizing when we are not comprehending what we read and learning strategies to fix that.

Writing: We have just started writing scary stories, and everyone is loving it! This has been there favorite part of the day.

Science: We have been discussing the scientific method.  The question the students chose to research and test is: Which paper airplane flies the farthest?  We have been designing an experiment to test this and will hopefully be doing that this week. If you see a lot of paper airplanes in the next few days, I promise they are for an educational purpose.

School Carnival- This Friday is our school carnival! I will see you all there! If you are available to volunteer for a 30 min. shift, please let me know!

                  Also, please remember to mark the calendar in the B.E.E. Book with how many minutes your child reads each night!

                  Have a great week! Let me know if you have questions/concerns.

                                                      -Miss Jensen

October 3

Another great week has flown by! I am looking forward to getting to talk to each of you this week during parent teacher conferences. I will be sending home a reminder of your time in your child's Monday folder today. Let me know if there are any conflicts.

With the start of a new month, I will be sending home a new reading calendar in the B.E.E. folder. As I collected Septembers calendars I realized a few of you were a little confused on the purpose of the calendar. I would like you to either mark off each day your child reads 20 minutes, or write how many minutes they read. It is really helpful for me to see how much they are reading at home, and it also influences their trimester grade. At the end of each month I also like to calculate up how much we read as a class. If it is easier to take the calendar out of the folder and have it somewhere handy at home, that is fine.  What matters is that it is filled out and sent back at the end of the month.

The Book Fair is going on all this week-right next to our classroom! They have been so excited. If you would like them to buy something, they are allowed to shop there during lunch, and our class will all get to go on Thursday afternoon.  It will also be open during conferences on Wednesday and Thursday evening.

Take-home reading will begin today! For those of you that are new to the program, there are some instructions in the bag that will go home tonight. In order for your child to get a new book the next day, you have to sign off that they read.

Also, if you would like to donate any of these items, it would make my life easier....

Old T-shirts (to wear when we do art projects)
Ziploc bags (Gallon size and regular sandwich size)
Post-it Notes
3x5 Index cards
Pencils (I have been amazed how fast we go through them!)

Have a great week! See you soon!
Miss Jensen

Geckster

Geckster has brought a lot of life and excitement to our class. Some of the kids wanted to bring cameras to take pictures of him to show their families-so I thought I would add a few for you. My nephew is also really into him:)