JUST THE FACTS...

CONFERENCES ARE THIS WEEK. Please try to be on time as it is very easy to get off schedule with even a five minute delay. Conferences are 20 minutes in length. This meeting is for parents and I would like to remind you that in February, the students will meet with us. I'm looking forward to meeting with each of you. Thursday and Friday of this week are half-days-- students will be dismissed at 11:00 a.m. Please make sure your child knows his/her plan on these half-days.

The Book Fair is open this week during conference time. Try to stop by when you are in for your conference. Students may bring money to buy items if you are very clear to your child and to me how much money he/she may spend and on what kind of items.

HALLOWEEN UPDATE: Most of you may already know that on Halloween we extend our morning an hour to give us optimal learning time on this exciting day. So that means the students will eat their lunch an hour later. Please make sure to send a healthy snack on that day. Students do not wear costumes to school. If you are at all able to have your child come home for lunch on that day to get his/her costume on, that is greatly appreciated. Families are invited to join us for the Halloween parade that begins at about 1:15. We will be walking with our reading buddies around the neighborhood and through Heritage House on Lake Street. You are also invited to join us in the classroom after the parade for our party that is being planned by parents.

Please note there is no school on Friday, November 6th, Veterans Day.

This week we started our second round of Workshops. Students look forward to these hands on activities that allows them to work in cooperative learning groups and practice skills. We have been very fortunate to have many parent helpers with these activities. This is record-setting parent attendance! I am most grateful to those parents as well as to our many Time and Money volunteers.

FIELD TRIPS: Please return the permission form and fee for our December 1st

trip to Seussical if you have not already done so. You will also receive notice later this week of a walking trip to the fire station on October 29th. Parent chaperones are welcome to join us for this short little trip.

LANGUAGE ARTS

We are now working in our 2nd unit of Open Court with the theme of animals. In this theme, students will be reading stories to expand their understanding of animals--their habits, characteristics and habitats. Most of the selections will be written in expository form. During the first few stories the comprehension strategies of Predicting, Visualizing and Asking Questions will be foremost.

Our phonics lessons will cover blending, segmenting, short vowel sounds, and various spellings for sounds. Language skills include antonyms, adjectives, proofreading marks and punctuation.

In writing we are using the 6 traits format that includes lessons on ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and conventions. Our first unit has focused primarily on ideas.

SOCIAL STUDIES

Our second unit is entitled Where We Live. This unit covers the Big Idea of Earth and its people. Our first lessons address the different types of land and water and about ways people interact with the environment. The vocabulary terms of continent, mountain, natural resource, and season are introduced. Students will use the comprehension strategies of prediction and inference during our lessons.

SCIENCE

Our next lessons will have us making wind flags and collecting wind data over a week's time. We will then focus on thermometers, recording indoor and outdoor temperatures. We will also graph water temperatures of cold, hot and mixed water.

MATH

We have been working hard at finding the values of various combinations of nickels and pennies. This week will be working on writing number models for change-to-more and change-to-less situations. We will also be practicing making up and solving number stories, often with money as our unit. Next week we will begin assessments for Unit 2. Our Unit 3 work is all about patterns. Students will learn about the predictability of patterns and how to state rules about those patterns.

Telling time and counting money will continue to be revisited in this unit.

As you may have noticed, the assignment of Math Homelinks homework is not always the same each week. Generally, it is about 3-4 a week. I do not like to assign homework on the weekends, but often we will have a Homelink related to a Friday lesson. Students are free to complete it over the weekend or save it for the following week to turn in--whatever works best for your family schedule.

CELEBRATIONS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Kylei Stigger-Blake
October 15th
Emmet Szewczyk
October 24th