Grants Gazette

September 8, 2015
Weve had a great first two weeks! Im very happy with the progress weve made in
school so far this year. Weve spent a lot of time learning procedures and reviewing
skills, but I know it will pay off when we really get into the swing of the year. This
group is inquisitive and observant. I cant wait to see what we accomplish this year!

Dates to Note:
Picture Day

Safety Reminders

9/14

In-service (no school)

9/25, 9/28, 9/29

If youre dropping off your child in the morning, please remember to pull all the way forward (from
the sidewalk near the nature trail) toward the office, to help traffic flow.

In-service (no school)

10/22, 10/23

Playground supervision begins at 7:45; please do not drop your children off before this time!

Students should know their phone numbers and addresses. Bus drivers have indicated that some
students dont know their addresses, which makes it difficult to determine which stops are needed.
Please help your child learn and memorize your phone number and address!

After school plans should be set before coming to school. I dont allow students to use the
phone after school to set up play dates. It sometimes causes kids to miss the bus! Weve already
had several students who are unsure about their after school plans. If youre picking up our child
after school, be sure to have a set meeting spot. Also, be sure to pull into the parking spaces instead of blocking the flow of traffic. It becomes very dangerous. The parking lot is very busy after
school. Please use caution and remind your child to watch carefully for cars that are backing up or
moving around parked cars.

Conferences WEEK OF 11/2

(early dismissal)
No school 11/6
Thanksgiving Break 11/26-27
Winter break begins 12/21

Back to school

1/4/16

WATER

Students
are encouraged to drink plenty
of water throughout
the school day. Feel
free to send in a
water bottle with
your child. Spillproof bottles are
ideal.

Homework
Homework was sent
home last Friday and is
due this coming Friday.
I forgot to include instructions for the reading passage. If you feel
your child needs to work
on fluency (smoothness
and speed) try timing
his/her reading for one
minute each evening.
Record how many words
were read in 1 minute.

News and notes from last week:

We enjoyed several books these past two weeks, including Ish, The Dot,
Stand Tall, Molly Lou Mellon, Chrysanthemum, The Important Book, How
Full is Your Bucket? and Judy Moody. With these stories we have practiced making predictions, identifying character traits, and worked on
strategies for being both a listener and a speaker. Reading screenings are
taking place, after which we will be creating small reading groups across
the grade level. Ill keep you posted as we get closer to finalizing our reading groups.

We practiced silent reading or read to self.

We practiced finding and writing numbers on a number line.

We practiced finding the halfway number between two numbers.

We walked to my yard to pick apples! We have an abundance this year, and

I was happy to share!

We started our journal writing with letters to the teacher.

Weve been working on our one point perspective art.

We took a reading assessment that will help us measure our growth

throughout the year.

Please note: our language arts materials have not yet arrived. Since our
spelling words are tied to this program, Im holding off on starting spelling until the other materials are here. We will have the same spelling list next week.

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Grants Gazette

Here are some things well be doing this week:

Spelling

Vocabulary

Math

We will begin our word study

(spelling program) this week.

Most days we also spend some

time recording in our vocabulary
journals. Vocabulary words are
teacher and student-selected;
students may add words to our
vocabulary box if they come
across an interesting word in
their reading that theyd like to
share with the class.

We will continue to work with place

value and number lines, and will
begin working on rounding to the
nearest ten and hundred.

Unit 1, Week 1: No Excuse Words

These are words that may not fit
expected spelling patterns, but
you are expected to spell them
correctly all the time. No excuses!
1.

who

2. was
3. with
4. they
5. were
6. some
7. said
8. from
9. each
10. any
11.

11. lesson
12. toward
13. winter
14. happen
15. spelling
16. animal
17. picture
18. subject
*continent
*ocean

Writing
We will be using the writers
notebooks this week to practice
sentences, paragraphs, indenting,
and narrative writing. We will
also be reviewing nouns, subject,
and predicate this week.

Im making a slight change in the

math homework this week. Instead
of specific homework tied to each
lesson, Im including some review
sheets. Some of our math lessons
are taking a bit longer complete
than anticipated. This is partly due
to needing to build some background knowledge (they didnt have
this program during second grade
so we will be filling some of that in
as we go).

Reading
We will continue practicing read
to self and will add read to
someone this week, with both
fiction and nonfiction. We will
practice questioning strategies
to check for understanding. We
will also continue with our study
of character traits and learning
about different genres.

Homework!

Reading Log

Math Common Core Review and Finding the Halfway Number

Sentence or Fragment review

Spelling: choose from the spelling menu for practice activities

* Students can always bring me their homework questionsas long as its not on Friday morning! We also have lunch workroom, which is open during lunch recess. Please dont hesitate to contact me if your child is consistently needing more than
15-20 minutes per evening to complete homework.

Questions? Please dont hesitate to call, email, or stop in any time. Our door is always open.
Classroom Phone: 966-1205
email: grantj@sitkaschools.org