Biography Reports

Welcome to the New Year

Dear Parents,

            Thank-you all so much for the very generous gifts for Christmas. We trust that you all had a wonderful holiday season and wish you all the best in the New Year.

            We thought it might be helpful to you to have a calendar of some events for planning.

1/9/12                        Student of the week will begin

1/13/12          Progress Reports 

1/16/12          MLK Day – ½ day; Biography projects due

1/25/12          Field trip to the Planetarium

2/3/12            100^th Day of school

2/9/12            Field Trip – African Folktales at the Carrboro Art Center

2/20-2/21      No school (as long as there have been no snow days)

2/24/12         Report Cards

3/2/12            Half day for conferences; Biography projects due

3/8/12            Field Trip – Tales from the Latino World at the Carrboro Art Center

            We will be sending home a letter describing all of the activities involved in the Student of the Week.  Here is a schedule of who the projected dates for students of the different weeks. If there is some reason why the projected week will not work for your family please let us know so changes can be made as soon as possible.

1/9-1/13         Owen and Vanner

1/16-1/20       Santiago and Shaye

1/23-1/27      Aidan and Gabe

1/30-2/3        Graden and Wren

2/6-2/10        Adam and Meleena

2/13-2/17      Fei-Fei and Lena

2/29-3/2       Lily

3/5-3/9          Dylan and Leopold

3/12-3/16      Leo and Max

3/19-3/23      Carter and Colby

4/2-4/6          Julia and Nicholas

4/9-4/13        Gil and Helen

4/16-4/20      Caitlin and Jenna

4/23-4/27     Brendan and Coyt

4/30-5/4       Graylyn and Laura

5/7-5/11        Ella and Hannah

5/14-5/18      Collin and Wiley

5/21-5/25      Beckman and Ori

Biography projects:  This will be a project which is primarily completed at home. Each child will have a biography book and poster sent home.  The book should be read with parents and then the child should complete the poster. Please feel free to do more reading or other research about the object of the biography.  As every student has different abilities and strengths, more or less help may be needed but it should primarily be the student’s work.

On the day that the projects are due, the students may dress up as the character or bring in props to talk about the person about whom they have studied. Each child will present the poster they have worked on and should be able to discuss the person and be able to answer basic questions.  (We intentionally scheduled this for a half day so that parents may be more likely to be off and able to come in and observe – we also thought it might be easier if students were dressed as the character not to have to change for lunch/recess.

Finally- Journal Prompts for January:

1/4/12 – My Winter Break

1/5/12 – My Favorite Foods

1/6/12 – Free Write

1/9/12 – This weekend I ______________

1/10/12 – My Favorite Thing to do in Math

1/11/12 – Some Important Things About Me (what makes you different from other people)

1/12/12 – Courage (MLK related)

1/13/12 – Free Write

1/16/12 – This weekend I ______________

1/17/12 – Some Things I Learned About MLK

1/18/12 – Some Healthy Things I do

1/19/12 – A Job I’d Like to do

1/20/12 – Free Write

1/23/12 – This weekend I _______________

1/24/12 – My Room (using describing words)

1/25/12 – My Favorite Book Character

1/26/12 – Something I enjoy in Winter

1/27/12 – Free Write

This information will also be in the blog and we will send home a copy in the folders.

Happy New Year to each and every one of you. Thanks so much for all that you do to help us out and make our jobs easier!

Warmly and gratefully,

Bonnie, Elizabeth and Heather

Calendar of Upcoming Events

Wednesday (14th) afternoon - there will be vision testing for elementary students. If your child wears glasses please make sure they bring them on Wednesday.

Thursday (15th) @ 1:30 - Winter Concert - this will be held in the Great Room and is open for parents to come and see - take pictures and videos of - the concert is a great performance including music in both English and French


Friday (16th) @ 10:00 - Special visitors to teach us about Hannukah - this visit will include traditional Hannukah food. Please let me know if there is any problem with this.

Monday (19th) all day - Pajama Day to celebrate the great effort by the elementary students during the Read-A-Thon

Monday (19th) @2:00 - Read-A-Thon Assembly - please feel free to join us in the Great room - there will be prizes awarded and class parties given out!

Tuesday (20th)  @ 1:00 - Holiday party

Wednesday (21st) - Happy Winter Vacation - see you again in 2012

Reading competition

We were impressed by the amount of reading that was done during the Read-A-Thon. It is a little disconcerting to see the lack of continued interest in reading since then.  Mrs. Ross and I were discussing this and thinking of methods to keep up the excitement and continued reading.  We have decided to have an ongoing contest.  We have reading logs in homework folders on which the students should record their reading. Parents need to initial the reading minutes. We will keep track of the minutes and when either class reaches 5000 minutes of reading total, we will have a movie and snack afternoon.  Everyone is a winner - both classes will be doing this and when each class gets to 5000 minutes they will get their reward, we will try to do make it a little competitive between the classes - we will each try to be first. 5000 minutes per class is less than 300 minutes per student.. which is 30 minutes a day for 10 days.  This is not a one time competition either.... we will start again once we get to 5000 minutes!

Journal Prompts for the rest of the year

Journal prompts for November/December:

November 28th - Thanksgiving Weekend

November 29th - Lost and Found

November 30th - Letter to Mrs. Crumb (rough draft)

December 1st - Final copy of letter on 'picture paper'

December 2nd - Free Write (bring a stuffed animal to write and read to)

December 5th - This Weekend I.....

December 6th - Recount Field Trip  ( stressing sequence of important events...first, second, next, then, finally, etc.)

December 7th - Ways I Can Move My Body  (focus on actions - verbs)

December 8th - My Favorite Movie (because...)

December 9th - Free Write

December 12th - This Weekend I .....

December 13th - My Favorite Clothes/Outfit (describing words - adjectives)

December 14th - My Favorite Cookie (adjectives again)

December 15th - My Favorite Music/Song/Singer

December 16th - Free Write

December 19th - This Weekend I....

December 20th - Giving

Journal Prompts 11/14-11/22

Monday - My weekend
Tuesday - My friend (s)
Wednesday  - A cat story
Thursday - Recess
Friday - Free writing
Monday - Birds
Tuesday - I am thankful for...

Shaving in School???

Brendan and the 'three letter j'

Colby and Santiago

Gabe - something is wrong with my hands, Mrs. Baker

Jenna and 'ar'

Spreading the joy (otherwise known as shaving cream)

Nicholas and the four letter 'a'

Wren and 'ng'

We have really been working on not having too much fun in school but we might have had a minor failure today. We did some bulletin board art with shapes and then practiced our phonograms with shaving cream.