Chinese Cultural Center

Hello families!  I tried to email some pictures but it didn't seem to send to anyone so I thought I'd post online for everyone to see!  We had a wonderful time and the students were so well behaved and interested in everything!
Enjoy!

Week ending 3/20/15

Today is the first day of Spring!  I'm so excited!  I look forward to more sunny days and more time outside to play for recess!  I hope you're looking forward to warmer weather and brighter days too.  Thanks so much to everyone who could make it this morning.  The students really enjoyed it and I look forward to using Soundscapes more often in our writing activities.

• On Monday, the 30th, we are heading to the Chinese Cultural Center.  Your child will need a brown/plastic bag lunch that can be thrown away when done.  They will not be bringing lunch boxes so keep that in mind when send lunch.  Also, we are leaving once we are all ready so please be sure they are on time that day.  Thanks in advance!
• If you have any tissues or cleaning wipes you'd like to donate, please do! 
• It was great meeting with you all at conferences the last two weeks.  I always find it beneficial to be touching base with families regarding their child's progress.  There are no more official conferences for the year but of course, if anything comes up, don't hesitate to touch base with me.  

3, 2, 1 important pieces of information you need to know about this week…

3 skills we focused on in reading workshop were: deciding if a question was meaningful or not, writing THICK (more thoughtful and meaningful) questions versus those that are easy to find to the answer, and we began focusing on making inferences.  Today we did "What's in my teacher's bag?"  Students had to decide what each item I pulled out of my bag, inferred about me.  What was the item?  What do you usually do with it or why do people have it?  Then we thought, "What does that say about Ms. DeKing?"  They did really well and inferencing is hard!

2 activities we did out of the ordinary were "flying" to China and getting our passports stamped and Arts Integration Morning.  We all enjoyed both of them!

1 thing Zoe wants you to know is we practiced measuring arm spans using a measuring tape.

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Week of 3/9/15

 We have been very busy in room 250!  We have been starting new units, finishing up others, and preparing for conferences!
Here's some important information for you:

• Thankfully, the weather seems to be making a good change for us.  All students are heading out recess these days so keep that in mind when sending in jackets, boots, etc in the morning.  
• We have our first field trip at the end of the month, Monday, the 30th.  I am still looking for 1 CORI'd chaperone if you're able to join us, please let me know.
• If you happen to have any boxes of tissues around that you could donate…we'd love them!  

3, 2, 1 things you need to know...

3 important skills we've worked on this in reading workshop are: thinking about the text as we read to determine what we've learned and what we still wonder about, understanding that writing questions before, during, and after read is very important to our comprehension of the story as it makes us think in and beyond the text, and sometimes our questions are not always answered (and that's OK!).  

2 math skills we're working on this week are mental math facts and patterns and using unifex cubes to check our work helps us become more independent.

1 thing Daniel D. wants you to know is…constant difference helps you figure out subtraction problems.

P.S.  There's no "What did we learn this week?" post…we ran out of time!  We'll have it back up next week!  :)

Week of 3/6/15

Hi Families,
We've had another full week of school.  I can't believe it!  Hopefully the weather has turned and Spring will arrive on schedule!

Important information…

• Don't forget to keep the warm clothes in school just in case we need them.  
• Don't forget to sign up for conferences.  The link is in the post below.  This is a time for your child to attend with you for us to meet together and they share their work and reflections with you.  

3 things to share with you from this week: 

3 skills we worked on were: determining our the ages of those in our family and starting to recognize constant difference (more work next week on that), providing evidence from the book for why we are like a particular character, and understanding how the sun, moon, and Earth all work together.  

2 things we did for Read Across America this week were…kicking the whole week off for the whole school at our assembly Tuesday morning and taking 10 minutes each day to Drop Everything And Read.  2 of our classmates announced it for the whole school on Wednesday!

1 exciting presentation was Mr. Joe and Ms. Vida today!  Please see the "What did we learn this week?" page to see all their favorite parts!

Enjoy the weekend!

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