Newsletter for December 1, 2017

I truly cannot believe it is already December. The year is moving along quickly and the afternoons have felt more like spring than winter.

What We Learned This Week

Word Study 
We studied the following word study topics:
- contractions
- apostrophes for ownership and contractions
- commas for lists and pauses
- bonus letters (One syllable words that have a short vowel sound followed by -f, -l, -s, -z double it. e.g., hill, buzz, etc.)
- common past tense verb endings -ed

Reading Workshop
We continue to use Aesop's fables to study author's message, identifying:
- Which animal character learned the message
- What human attributes and behaviors the animals symbolize
- Author's message
- Support from the story
We will continue this unit of study until winter break. I will continue to revisit more explicit/literal reading skills and strategies in the meantime.

Writing Workshop
- We wrote our pen pals from Livingston Elementary who we will host in January for science. Our pen pal letters to Oman were returned six weeks after mailing them so I'll scan them and email them. The mail service is not very good:(
- Students are being held accountable for basic convention: indenting paragraphs, capitalizing the beginnings of sentences and proper nouns, ending sentences with punctuation, and crafting complete sentences.

Math
We are digging deeper into our study of multiplication. We have practiced fact strategies for zeroes, ones, doubles, and fives. Any basic fact involving one of these single digit numbers should remind students they have a strategy and use it to quickly produce the product.

I introduced division as equal groups shared of a whole. Students should recognize the many ways division is represented and the associated vocabulary.

We are continuing to study mixed operation (addition and subtraction) story problems and missing addend problems.

Science 
I introduced basic block coding (as opposed to text coding) in science this week, which the students seemed to really enjoy. It has come a long way since I learned BASIC on my ATARI programmable computer in the early 80's. Here is a link to some of the introductory lessons and activities students can access from home as well as SCRATCH, a popular free online programming language for game/program creation. I used a Star Wars project to introduce code.

December 2017

Holiday gifts - It is a long practiced tradition that elementary students give their teachers gifts during the winter holidays. My gift is getting to work with your wonderful students in an amazing school in an incredible school district and community. Please do not feel any obligation to get me, or any other teacher a gift, but if you and your student feel strongly about gift giving, please consider making a small donation to an organization you support in our class' name.

21 Holiday Parties 2:00 pm

December 22-January 4 Winter Break

January 2018

5 No School for Students:  Teacher Workday/PD Day

8 School Resumes

15 No School for Staff or Students:  Martin Luther King’s Birthday

18 PT Conferences grade 1-5 (students are dismissed at 11:05)
22 STEM Exchange with Livingston (UA Rotary providing pizza)

February 2018

5  State of the Schools at UAHS 5-8 p.m.

5-9 Collection Days for “Box Tops for Education”
8 Third Grade Musical
11-14 Ohio Wildlife Center donation drive
14 Ohio Wildlife Center

19 No School Staff or Students:  Presidents’ Day

28 Early Release 1:00 (NO LIFT)

March 2018

5 Spring Pictures

9 End of Second Trimester
9 Invention Convention 10-10:30am in the Multipurpose Room/Cafeteria

12-16  Spring Break

19 No School for Students:  Teacher Grading Day

27 Progress Reports available online

30  Good Friday:  No School for Students or Staff

April 2018

4  Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon at Windermere 11-12 in lounge

May 2018

April 30-May 4  Scholastic Book Fair

4 KidFest, 5-8 p.m.

8  NO School for students or certified staff - Ohio Primary Elections
11 Science field trip to Livingston Elementary

21  Field Day

28 No School Staff:  Memorial Day

30  Last Day for Students

30 End of third trimester