Hi Everyone! Happy New Year! We are already beginning the new year with so many opportunities to learn through classroom investigations, field trips and school events. Here is an update on the academics and fun activities planned for the month of January and some February dates as well. In reading, we are studying the realistic fiction genre. Your child is assigned a partner who is reading the same book to share thinking, enriching and supporting the metacognitive work of reading. The chicken book report is done individually at home but will be discussed in partnership during reading workshop. This month my read alouds include No Talking, by Andrew Clements and Just Juice, by Karen Hesse. During read alouds we come up with “thick” questions and later answer them in the reading response journal. We are writing realistic fiction stories in writing workshop. So far we have seed ideas on main characters, possible settings that journey throughout a story, a variety of problems that show conflict with solutions that entertain and teach us about ourselves. This week we will put our seed ideas to work, pulling them out of our Writer’s Notebooks and beginning writing a realistic fiction rough draft. We should have our first story published by the next Families As Learning Partners scheduled for January 29th. Our focus in math is the multiplication and division connection. We are working with real life problems using a variety of strategies to solve. I am teaching cross multiplication and long division algorithms. I am also making connections to perimeter and area. Please have your child continue the work of automatizing and using strategies to solve facts from the fact challenge sheets that go home. This week we are studying fact challenge sheet seven. I am putting these fact challenges on the classroom website under the math icon (the light bulb). This Monday we begin science lessons in the classroom with Unit 1: Food Chains and Webs. First the kids explore soil and then we move on to creating habitats for classroom creatures to observe. This unit should be a lot of cerebral fun for all. A Chicken Book Report update: Most students have earned five chicken feet, which is the equivalent of 10 books with 10 book reports. If your child has read less than this number, they may need your encouragement nightly to read a minimum of 20 pages. If they read 20 pages in class as well they can complete a book in about a week. My minimum requirement is two books/chicken book reports a month. Wednesday, January 13th, is the field trip to National Museum of the American Indian. Please bring in field trip permission slips if you haven’t done so and indicate if you would like to chaperone as well. Have your child bring a bag lunch, as there is a possibility of missing the regularly scheduled lunch period. Friday, January 15th, from 9:30 to 12:00, all classes in third, fourth, and fifth grades will march to Borough Hall to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I am looking for volunteers to walk with us. In celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. we will also dedicate the classroom blog to MLK for homework on Thursday, January 14th and Tuesday January 19th. If your child does not have access to the Internet, this assignment can be written on lined paper as well and turned in the next day. On Monday, school is closed in recognition of MLK but will be open to all who wish to attend PS261’s First Annual Day of Service. Saturday Scholars begins this Saturday, January 16th. Letters went home with the invited students on Friday. The permission slip must be returned with a parent signature. Some February events you should know about are listed below: Feb. 12th - Chinese New Year Dinner in the Cafeteria sponsored by the 5th grade Feb. 15th – 19th No school for Winter Break return Feb. 22nd Feb 25th - Black History Celebration in Auditorium from 6:15-8:15 pm With much affection and emotion I want to thank you all for your generous holiday money gift. You really are an amazing community of parents. Ms. Scarborough |