Weekly Update for January 17-20

Monday, January 16^th, 2012

Dear Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful break and are enjoying getting back into the swing of things! We have a busy week of all brand new units, so your students should come home with plenty of exciting news! 

A Few Reminders/Important Dates:

We begin The Wise Woman tomorrow, Tuesday 1/17! Please send students with their books!

Collections of box tops, ink cartridges, and used cell phones are continuous, so please feel free to send them in any time. We do seem to have a great many receptacles for various odds and ends, so if you find yourself afraid to throw things away, don’t hesitate to e-mail and I’ll let you know if we need it. 

This Week at a Glance

Language Arts: We are really focusing our Riggs words on spelling rules over the next few weeks. Please encourage your students to practice chanting and explaining the rules at home with you. I will remind students that they can bring their spelling notebooks home if they have trouble copying the words into their planners clearly. In Writing, we are working on story telling. We will be examining the structure and elements of the story this week through multiple versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This will lead us into our writing project next week wherein the students will do their own retellings. I am thrilled to say that we are beginning The Wise Woman. This book is written at a very high level of language, which creates wonderful opportunities to build reading comprehension skills. The actual content of the story, however, will be genuinely and profoundly relatable. I will be reading aloud to the students with lots of class discussion as we go to ensure comprehension. Rather than doing reading group discussions, we will be doing more journaling activities. I will still utilize any and all reading group volunteers either for reading for other subjects or for doing writing workshops. 

History & Geography: We are beginning our new unit on the Vikings! This week we will be learning about who the Vikings were, when and where they lived, and their unique skills as craftsmen and sailors.

Science: We are beginning our new unit on Light & Optics this week as well. This week we will be talking about sources of light and what light is. We will talk about how it travels and creates shadows. We will look at transparent/translucent/opaque objects and examine the reflection of light in mirrors and other reflective surfaces. As we do not have a text book, it is really important for the students to participate in the experiments and discussions whenever possible. 

Thank you, again, for your continued support! Have a wonderful week!

Miss Smith and Mr. Sultana