Wednesday January 27th

today was great and busy.we did morning meeting and we went to a acemble it was a long one. after the acemble we went to lunch and after that we did writing we are trying to convince people to read the book called spaghetti high school kids came and read dreaming of amaercia . from renee

Tuesday, January 19th

We started our day with cutting out our new word study words for the week. Then, we had our morning meeting in English. Today we once again helped EDIT morning message. We are working on reading carefully and making appropriate changes to spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. We also discussed the calender and completed our daily math routines during morning meeting. After our meeting we had a minilesson in English. Today we practiced getting deeply inside of the Story Spaghetti that we have been reading. We tried to listen to the story and create a dream or play in our minds. Today the students were asked to write about their thinking for the first time. After responding to the story the students worked on their Daily Five choices and met with their teachers in small groups to learn their new word study patterns. To end the morning, we had a chance to read the biographies that our friends wrote about us. We then created a chart to show the things that our firends did include in the biographies. We will be working in groups based on gender for the next week in writing. This is to get us excited about biographies and in groups we will be reading about famous people. The students will find our tomorrow who they will be reading about.

To start our afternoon, we had a special read aloud. Today Derek read us the book Froggy's Baby Sister. After he read he shared some speical news! We then worked on our math, the green gators finished their first grade assessment and the red rhinos worked on using coins. To end the day we read to our reading buddies in Mrs. Maynard and Mrs. Stacey's rooms

Scholastic Book Ordering Online

Dear Parent,

I have exciting news. You can now place your Scholastic Book Clubs orders online!

Browse all the great monthly Book Club selections at low prices and order online. Plus, our class earns a FREE book every time a parent orders online.

Here’s how it works:

1. Use the information below to access the Scholastic Book Clubs Web site.
2. Browse the titles with your child and place your order with your credit card.
3. Your order will come to me, and your credit card payment will go directly to Scholastic’s secure server. There’s no need to send money to school.
4. After I submit the entire class order to Scholastic, your order will be delivered to our classroom for your child to take home.

To get started, go to the Web address below and enter our class’s personalized user name and password in the sign-in fields on the right side of the page. Note: You do not need to create your own user name and password.

www.scholastic.com/bookclubs
User Name: EVDuallanguage
Password: sammy

Ordering online is the most convenient way to use Scholastic Book Clubs. You can order anytime, right up until the online order due date. You’ll also get instant access to over 500 additional titles plus online-only specials and discounts.

And don’t forget: Every time a parent places an order online, we earn a FREE book for our classroom library!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,


JANINE HELFER

Friday, January 15th

We had a very busy end to our week. We started our morning by responding to the messages in our dialogue journals. After our writing time, we too our word study assessment and had morning meeting. Today's morning meeting was in Spanish. We helped write the message, talked about the calender and completed our daily math routines. After mornig meeting we had our Reader's Theater Performances. This week the teacher's filled out a rubric to provide the students with some feedback about their performances. These rubrics will be going home in Monday Folders. Please review these rubrics with your child and help them to work on the areas that we have indicated need improvement. Overall, we really enjoyed listening to the performances and have seen a big impovement in the students reading fluency.

After lunch we had our non-ficition read aloud. Today we started to read the biography of Oprah Winfery. Ask your child to tell you what a biography is and what they learned about Oprahy Winfery. We also learned about a convention that will help us as readers of non-fiction texts. Today we learned about the index of a book. We added this convention to our convention books. We also had a mystery reader today. Thank you so much to Ms. Anderson (Danielito's mother) who read us a great book...Vote Sponge Bob. After our reader, the green gators took an assessment in mathematics and the red rhinos worked on creating different amonts of money with coins. To end the day we awarded the "goodies" in the estimation jar to Nicole who guessed the exact number of pieces of chocolate in the jar.

Wednesday January 13th

This morning our morning meeting was in Spanish. We helped write morning message, talked about the calender, and completed our daily math routines. After our morning meeting, we completed our biographies about someone in the class. These writing pieces were written without any instruction and will be used as a way to inform the teachers about what skills the students need to learn in order to write a GREAT biography. After writing workshop, we had our reading workshop minilesson. Today's lesson was on how readers "step-into" the story by creating images in their minds. Today we practiced this "special" kind of reading with the story Spaghetti by Cynthia Rylant. Ask your child to describe the kinds of images that came to their minds as we read. After our minilesson, the students worked on the word study routine and only their daily five choices.

After lunch, we read a little more out of the book Stanley in Space. In math, the green gators practiced our doubles in Spanish. The green gators worked on facts such as 4 + 4= 8 and 10 + 10=20. The rhinos worked on story problems which required them to find the perimeter of certain shapes. These problems required the students to add three two digit numbers. Please continue to support your children in the strategies that they are using to solve two digit addition problems when they are working on their homework.

Friday, January 8th

What a great week we have had. After writing in our dialogue journals, we started our day with our word study assessment. After our word study assessments, we had our morning meeting (which was in Spanish today). We helped write our morning message and completed our daily math routines. After our morning meeting, we were off on day 4 of trip across the country with Stanley. Today we visited the great city of Chicago! Ask your child to share with you some details about their trip to the windy city! After our trip, we completed our word study routine (glue in sort) and our daily five activities.

After lunch, we listened to another chapter out of our book Flat Stanly in Space. Ask your child to give you a summary of what has happened in the book so far. After read aloud, we had mathematics. The red rhinos are working hard at becomeing more efficient at strategies for solving two-digit addition problems. The green gators completed their word problem assessment. We ended our day with science. We learned a great new song that will help us remember the vocabulary to describe the proceses that take place in the water cycle. We also used this vocabulary to label a diagram.

Thursday, January 7th

Another great learning day in C-7 and C-8! We started the morning with morning meeting in English. The students are getting so good at writing morning meeting and our daily math routines that they leading the meeting. Mrs. Helfer and Mrs. Wesley have been joking with them and telling them that they don't even need us anymore! After morning meeting, we were once again off to another city with our friend Flat Stanley. Today we traveled to the great city of Dallas. Ask your child to tell you all of the fun and exciting things they saw while they were in this busy city. After our trip, we completed our word study activity for today (look, say, cover, write, check)and our daily five routines. We ended our morning by discussing the words that we could form using the letters in the words rectangles and diciembre.

After lunch, the red rhinos worked once again on adding two digit numbers. Today we tried to move away from drawing stick and circle drawings to trying to add the tens and ones. We are getting pretty good at this! The green gators continued to practice different strategies for solving different types of word problems. We then began our end of unit assessment, which we will complete tomorrow. After math, we had social studies and non-fiction read aloud. We continue to learn about communities and the types of communities that exist in our world.

Wednesday, January 6th

We started our morning with morning meeting in Spanish. We helped write the morning message, completed math routines and discussed the question of the day. Today's question of the day was who washes the dishes in your house. We learned that the greatest number of students said that their mom's washed the dishes. After morning meeting, we were off to see another city with Flat Stanly on our Webquest. Today Flat Stanley visited Atlanta, Georgia! Ask your child what fun and exciting things they did on their trip today. After our trip, the students completed the word study activity for today, speed sort and no peek write and worked on their daily 5 routines.

To start the afternoon, we enjoyed a little more from the book Flat Stanley in Space. Ask your child to tell you what happened in the story today! After our read aloud we started math. Today the green gators, worked on accuracy with subtraction and subtraction word problems. The red rhinos once again worked on strategies for adding two digit numbers. Today they used these strategies to solve story problems. To end the day, we broke up into two groups for social studies. We are leaning about different types of communities. Ask your child to tell you the characteristics of a city or Urban area!

Tuesday, January 5th

Another busy learning day for the students in C-7 and C-8. We started our day with our morning meeting in Spanish. We helped write morning message, completed our math routines and sang our Spanish good morning song. Today's question of the day was...

After morning meeting, we started our Flat Stanley Webquest. Today Stanley traveled to New York City. He visited Broadway and watched some shows, saw the statue of liberty, went to the Empire State Building, took a walk in Central Park, and ate lunch at Tavern on the green. Ask your child to share with you what other fun and interesting things they learned on their trip with Stanley! If you would like to check out the web quest, I will attach a link on the home page of our BLOG after the students are finished with their trip. After our trip, the students completed their scrapbook to document their adventures. We are excited to find our what city Stanley will travel to tomorrow!

We started our afternoon, by check our experiment that we set up yesterday. Today we noticed that the water level went down! We learned that this is because the water evaporated! Ask your child to explain the term evaporation. We also discussed the water cycle and the terms condensation, collection, and precipitation. In math, the green gators practiced math mountains and the red rhinos shared strategies for adding double-digit addition. We ended our day by sharing some stories with our kindergarten and pre-K reading buddies.

Monday, January 4th

Boy it's great to be back in school. We had a great learning day today! We started the morning with our morning meeting in English. We helped write our morning message and completed our daily math routines. Todays question of the day was did you watch the ball drop on New Years Eve. We learned that their was a greater number of people that did stay up to watch the ball drop and to ring in the new year. After morning meeting, We learned the proper way to address an envelope for the mail. We learned that your return address should go in the left-hand corner, a stam should go in the right-hand corner, and the destination address should go in the center. We then used what we had learned about addressing an envelope to address our envelopes that would hold our flat stanleys. We were excited to finally send our stanleys off in the mail. Be sure to tell your friends and family that they are on their way! After we sent our Stanleys off, we made our New Years resolutions. Ask your child what they resolved to do in school during the year 2010.

We started our afternoon with a non-ficition read aloud on the Water Cycle. We sent up an experiment...we filled a glass jar with water and set it on the windowsill for the night. Then we made predicitions about what would happen to the water over night. Talk to your child about what they predicted would happen to the water. In math the red rhinos learned about estimation. We learned that grouping objects (especially by 10s) would help us make better estimations. The green gators practiced word problems with subtraction and took a Quick Quiz. We ended the day with another science experiment. We explored air using syringes and tubing!