September 12. 2015

 Thanks to everyone who was able to make it on Friday to the Recess Monkey concert and BBQ.  It was a lot of fun seeing all the students together dancing together to the music.

This week, students were becoming more comfortable with all the new changes this year, getting to know each other better, and helping improve our classroom community.  Students have been focused on their weekly math lessons and enjoyed learning new songs and games together at our circle times.

The previous week, we had the 1st Great Lesson, and the stories of the creation of the universe.  This week we jump ahead of that event and look at the formation of the Earth and all the life that has been on it.  For the 2ndGreat Lesson, students are introduced to a large timeline that is broken up into the different eras of life on Earth.  We talk about each era and the major events and types of organisms that lived during each one.  Students then get to put different types of plants and animals on the timeline and figure out where everything is supposed to go on a timeline that spans between now and 4 billion years ago!

This week was also the start of some specialists in the classroom.  Students started having weekly Music and Chorus lessons with Ms. Amy and got to run an obstacle course with Mr. Robin in P.E..  Teaches also started our weekly individual student conferences.  We have scheduled each student some time during the week to meet with a teacher and talk about how they are feeling at school and come up with ideas and plans on what they are interested learning about this year.

Next week, we will be starting our weekly Literature Circles.  Small groups of students will choose a book to read together during the week and have a discussion about the book at the end of the week.  We are really excited to start and get to know more about your child’s thoughts and feelings from they read.

We will also be starting our daily math practice with Rocket Math and our first Spelling Pre-test will be coming home on Monday.  Please practice both of these throughout the week to help them succeed.  Students will be given Rocket Math sheets everyday but Wednesday.  First graders will not start Rocket Math for a few more weeks, so that they can prepare and get more comfortable with their math facts.

On Bloomz, we have setup a page to sign-up for Goal Setting Conferences on October 2nd.  Please sign-up for a time as soon as possible.  The other classrooms at MCH should have their sign-ups on their pages soon, so if you have another child at MCH you can schedule for back to back conferences.  Remember that both you and your child need to be present for this conference.

In your child’s folder, there are some forms with more information about the conferences and some forms to fill out.  

Please fill out the forms and return them in them in your child folders by Monday, September 28th.  These are very important for us as teachers to learn more about what your child wants from school this year and will help guide the Goal Setting Conference.  If there are any questions, please let us know.

We hope you all have a great, sunny weekend,
 
Ben, Mary, & Khavitha