It was great to see so many of you at Chic-Fil-A tonight.  I wonder what class will win the cow!

Just a reminder that we need all school forms filled out and returned this week.  I will be giving you an early release form to fill out at Open House.

Thank you to everyone who signed up at Sneak A Peek to provide sweet treats this year.  We will put the list out again at Open House for anyone who missed it last week.  In addition we will also be asking for copy parents and reading parents once a week.  Please sign up at Open House if you are able to donate your time.  We greatly appreciate your help and support.

Your child wrote you a letter today in his/her letter home journal.  Please respond to your child's letter and return the journal to school by Monday morning.  Your child will write to you every Thursday.  For the next several weeks we will write the letter as a class.  Your child has the option of adding his/her own details, but is encouraged to copy the letter from the Promethean Board.  The purpose of this is to teach basic letter formation, the parts of a letter, and to demonstrate what is expected.  Therefore, you should see most words spelled correctly, as well as correct punctuation and capitalization.  If you do not see this, please discuss paying attention and copying carefully with your child.  Once your child is writing the letter independently we will check to make sure that the letter is complete, however we will not make any changes or suggestions about content or conventions.  This should give you a true picture of your child's writing ability.  This is a great time to discuss errors and how to correct them with your child.  The letter home journal (LHJ) should be a way for your child to communicate with you as well as a way to practice writing skills at home.

In math this week we worked on all baseline data.  The class took the addition and subtraction timed tests, and the first Exemplar.  The class took part one of the first nine week unit test.  Part two will be taken tomorrow.  This test will help us place the class into math groups based on ability.  A new test will be given to assess abilities at the beginning of each nine week grading period.

This week we read short stories such as First Day Jitters and How I Spent My Summer Vacation, as well as the chapter book Hour of the Olympics.  We sequenced the events, made connections, and discussed vocabulary.  On Friday your child will take the SRI which is a computer test that measures your child's comprehension.  We will use this test as well as the ending DRA score from first grade to place your child in an appropriate reading group.  We will meet our book buddies from Mrs. Satterthwait's class tomorrow morning.  We will be reading with this class every Friday morning (8:20-8:50).  We encourage your child to bring a favorite book from home each week to read during this time.  When reading out loud to someone else it's important to have a familiar story.  This will help with fluency.

Open House on Tuesday, August 19, 2008