October 7-11

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Parent night will be this Wednesday from 6:15-7:00!  We will start right on time with our Meet the Team video!  You won't want to miss it!  If you are unable to make this event, please contact me so that we can make other arrangements to get this VERY important information!

Homework packets are due on Thursday!  Please send them back to school with your child!  Remember, in order to have free choice Fridays, homework packets need to be turned in by Friday morning!  No homework packet = no free choice Friday!

Believe it or not, conferences are coming right up as well!  I had originally planned to send out a sign up sheet in this week's totes but unfortunately it's not a tote week!  This year, the plan is to send out totes every other week instead.  Rolling with the punches, I'll still send out the sign up sheets this Thursday but they will come home in your child's classroom folder instead.  Be on the lookout for that! Conferences will be on a first come, first serve basis so please send back those sheets as soon as possible!  You can plan for your conference to be on either October 24, 29, or 30th.

On Thursday, I'll also be sending home a sheet as a sign up to bring things for our Harvest Party!  In true Team Blowey style, we will be celebrate with movement, not food.  However, we'll need your help to get the supplies for our harvest themed activities.  If you are willing and able to contribute anything, please send back the bottom of the form!  The harvest party will be on Thursday, October 31 from 1:00-2:45 (set-up, play time, and breakdown).  Any questions after receiving the form, please let me know!

This Thursday, students will be going to a fire safety presentation!  They'll learn about how to make a plan in case there is a fire as well as some safety precautions that they can take to avoid a household fire!

Classroom Request:  Watching this Meet the Team video makes my day and I would love to have it do the same for you as well!  I'm wondering if there is anyone out there who would be willing to donate some blank recordable DVDs to the classroom so that I can make copies for the team!  If you are willing and able to donate, please let me know!

THIS WEEK IN...

Phonics:  We're working with the long and short i sound.  Here are our focus words:  did, fin, pick, nine, pipe, rip, mix, five, side, and hike.

Vocabulary:  Our new words are:  deaf, language, signing, cultures, relatives, and celebrate.  We'll figure out what these words mean and build connections with them.  Then, we'll search for them in the short story called A Special Camp by Kate Jones.

Comprehension:  We will work with main idea and supporting details again this week.  The main idea is the most important part of a story or article.  The details tell us more about the main idea to help explain it.  This week, we'll practice this skill while reading Meet Rosina by George Ancona.

Grammar:  Last week, we learned about the subject of a sentence.  This week, we will learn about the second part of the sentence called the predicate.  The predicate tells what the subject does or is.  For example in the sentence:  "Rick is a good artist"  Rick would be the subject and "is a good artist" would be the predicate.

Writing:  We will continue to work on our personal narratives.  Last week, students had the chance to brainstorm some of their most vivid memories... fun times, scary times, and angry times.  From that list, they chose one memory to write about.  Today, students began the brainstorming part of the writing process.  We thought about the setting of our memory, our senses during the memory (touch, taste, smell, hear, and sight), and our emotions during the memory.  We'll use this information to write our rough drafts.

Scholastic News:  This year, my hope is to get Team Blowey to dive into more nonfiction text.  So, each week we will be reading and using a Scholastic News article.  At the beginning of the year, we are doing these articles in a whole group setting but as the year progresses we'll be doing the Scholastic News articles on a independent level.  This week, our Scholastic News issue ties in perfectly with our fire safety presentation!  We'll be reading about firefighters, now and then!  

Science:  To continue our study on plants, we'll be talking about the lifecycle of a pumpkin, which is perfect for this time of the year!  We'll spark our interest by reading The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll.  Then, we'll have the chance to create our very own unique pumpkins.  We'll also have the chance to watch a movie called Pumpkin Circle which shows us the lifecycle of a pumpkin using time-lapse photography.

Social Studies:  This week, we are finally introducing the popcorn kernels to help keep our vision alive!  When Team Blowey spies one of their teammates making part of the vision come true (creative, teamwork, respectful, fun) they will write that teammates name on the corresponding popcorn kernel.  At the end of each week, we'll celebrate these teammates at morning meeting!  Then, those of us who earned popcorn kernels  will put them in our popcorn boxes.  Our goal is to have our popcorn boxes overflowing by the end of the year!

Read Aloud:  We are still enjoying the wonderful story about Charlotte and Wilbur!

Have a spectacular week!