Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Newsletter 9/23- 10/4

Hello!
The next couple of weeks are extremely busy at South Elementary! As your child may have told you, our fieldtrip on Thursday has been canceled due to the lack of available buses. We are looking ahead to see if we can find an open day to reschedule.  In exchange, the students have a very exciting alternative activity. Today they will get to attend an assembly where they will meet Tyler Whitesides.  He is the author of "The Janitor"series books.
My schedule is also crazy this week.  I am missing a couple of days for teacher trainings and surgery for my son on Thursday.  We have excellent substitutes that work well with 3rd graders and will continue on with our regular curriculum.

Daily Schedule:

Tuesday:
-Bell Work/Journals
-Word Work (Spelling Packet)
-Tyler Whitesides Assembly
-Daily 5/ Read-to-Self
-Read-aloud
-Math (Bar Graphs)
-Times Tables (9's)
-Cursive

Wednesday:
-Bell Work/Journals
-Framing your Thoughts
-Music with Mrs. Leavitt
-Daily 5/ Read-to-Self
-Math (Bar Graphs cont.)
-Early Out

Thursday:
-Bell Work/Journals
-Dictation
-Sparkle
-Cursive
-Library
-Daily 5/Read-to-Self
-Math
-Times Tables (9's)

Friday:
-Bell Work/Journal
-Spelling Test
-P.E.
-Daily 5 (Read-to-Self)
-Read-Aloud
-Math
-Art with Mrs. Petersen
-Cursive/Store

The students will be let out at 2:30 pm during the week of Sep. 30th- Oct.4th (even on Wed). I am really looking forward to meeting with you all.  If possible,  have your child come with you to attend their SEP.

Have a great week!

Monday, September 9, 2013

Newsletter 9/9 - 9/20

Hello! Sorry to have skipped the newsletter last week! Here is information that will cover this week and next.  If you have questions throughout the two weeks, please feel free to contact me.

Math- Math is throwing the teachers for a bit of a loop.  We are continually meeting and training on this new math program.  This "Go Math" method is proving to be very beneficial to our students. It follows the Utah Core, which causes for greater concentration on fewer subject areas. As the students progress through the grades, each concept will have been taught more fully. Each subject is taught including many different methods to complete the task. It is really testing the teachers to think outside the box! Thank you for your time and patience while working on the homework.  Just a suggestion- If the particular math assignment your child is working on is taking more than a half hour to complete, please just set it aside to complete at a later time.  Since the students already have 25 minutes of reading each night, more than a half hour of other studies may frustrate them.  The homework assignments are all due 2 days after they are sent home.  

Spelling- Spelling words sent home on Monday, test on Friday.  If your child misses school on a Friday, I just leave it up to you to give them the test at home.  If you have lost the list, the blog will have the words printed there. Once your child has completed the test, just have them hand it in to me.

Cursive Writing- The students have been working on their cursive lowercase letters in class. They have completed their first ten and have had them graded.  On the progress report, you will notice that there are 100 points possible.  That is ten points per lowercase letter.  If your child has not been completing the work in class, they have points deducted.  The students are able to take the books home if they would like to make up the points.

Keyboarding- The students will be learning to keyboard in January, when we have consistent use of the computer lab.

Daily 5- We have started working on "Read-to-Self", Word Work, Listening & Writing.  Read-to-Someone will come as the year progresses.  We will begin a "big" writing project after we spend a few more weeks on "Framing Your Thoughts".

Language Arts- Weekly parts of speech lessons, focusing on: nouns, verbs & adjectives.  Guided Reading groups including "Close Reading" lessons.  Students are learning to pull information from the texts and make inferences independently.

Unit Study- We just finished our "Heat & Light" unit.  Our new unit of study is from our Social Studies curriculum, which is focused on the study of Iron County.  We have a field trip scheduled to Parowan on Sep. 26th, where we will visit many Iron County Historical sites. Please let me know if your child will be bringing a lunch from home. Otherwise, I will order them a school lunch for that day.  The food choices are sunbutter sandwiches or a meat sandwich. We will leave the school at 9:00 a.m. and be back by 3:20 p.m.  After we finish this social studies unit, we will alternate back to science.  The next science unit is on "Heat & Light".  We will continue alternating this way throughout the year.

Art-  The students have been working on shadow puppets in preparation for their "Fables" plays.  It is amazing to see the students' creativity at work!

Music- The students are getting music instruction twice a week.  If you have questions about that curriculum, shoot Mrs. Leavitt an email and she will let you know what's happening for that week.

Book Orders- Due this Friday. It is so simple to order online. Please consider using this process if possible.

Thank you for your support!  My students are the best!