Room 13's Blog

Field Trip

2009-03-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is our field trip to the County Office of Education, where we will be participating in an Author's Fair. The children will view art work, listen to a story and visit with Patty Hall, an author who writes stories about Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy.

Please send a sack lunch and snack for your child. We will not go to the morning assembly. Children will come directly to the classroom instead.

Thanks again for your support,
Melanie

Math

2009-03-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

Please take time each evening to help your child sort, identify, and count pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. We will be working on this unit through March and then will be using coins for addition and subtraction.
A great money activity, is to play store with your child. Start small. Begin by having the items cost less than ten cents. This way the children can use pennies and then learn to trade them in for nickels. Gradually increase the price of the items and add dimes and maybe, quarters.

Enjoy the weekend,
Melanie

Remember next week is Spirit Week.

Literacy/Science

2009-03-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the "big ideas" in nonfiction text. Books about science, nature and animals lend themselves to this genre. Students will gather information and find the main idea by using text structures and features.
This focus will go nicely with our new science unit, "Animals Two by Two". Students will learn about snails, worms (my favorite), isopods and fish. Please consider taking a trip to the library to borrow nonfiction books about these animals.

I am sending home an extended high frequency word list today. This list should take us through to June. I can't believe I'm talking about the end of the year!

More to come later in the week,

Melanie

Literacy

2009-03-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

The Garden

2009-03-06T15:50:00.000-08:00

Hi All,
Please check your child's backpack this evening. The children harvested all of the lettuce growing in our garden. Each child is bringing home a small bag of delicous (almost clean) lettuce for your salad this evening!

Have a restful weekend,
Melanie

Room 13 Information and Math Concepts

2009-02-18T15:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Families,

I apologize for being so lax about blogging over the past few weeks! I'll give you a quick recap of what's been going on.

We had a wonderful time at our 100th Day celebration. The students moved through seven different activities and there were plenty of volunteers! A very big "Thank You" to Missy, Diane, Gillian and James!

The Jog-A-Thon was also a lot of fun. We walked and jogged for 30 minutes. The children did a great job and we were all very tired when the time was up!

We are beginning a new math unit on numbers 11 thru 30. The focus is on tens and ones. The children will work with ten's frames to make and compare numbers. Also, please help your child to practice counting on.

Our next math unit focuses on money. The children will identify pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. They will also be responsible for learning the value of each coin. It's never to soon to begin this process! So please begin working with your child at home. Please teach the concept of counting on by using dimes, nickels and pennies.

And, finally, the current reporting period ends on Friday. Parent/teacher conferences are scheduled for the first week in April. Please make space on your calendar now.

More about reading and writing expectations next week.

Literacy

2009-02-11T13:23:00.000-08:00

Our new Unit of Study focuses exploration of characters to help us understand the stories we read. The students will describe how the characters act, feel and talk. We will be revisiting fairy and folk tales that we read earlier in the year.

In phonics, we are continuing to work with short vowel sounds. This week our focus is on short Ee.

The animal character that accompanies this sound is Edna Elephant. Some of the word families we are working with are; et, eck, ed, en.

Please continue to help your child learn the twenty-five sight words. I am also adding some extra words each week.

The children are writing stories about personal experiences. Many of their stories are about trips, families, pets and friends. When your children write at home, encourage them to sound out the words using one finger for each sound. It is much more powerful for the children to sound out the words themselves. Please try not to make the sounds for your children.

Please let me know if you would like some pointers on reading and writing with your children.

General Information

2009-02-10T13:46:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry for letting last week go by without posting a blog. The week just went by too quickly. I hope everyone had a relaxing weekend. We have another three day weekend coming up. No school on Monday the 16th. I am using this post for general information and will write more about the curriculum tomorrow.

Humane Society

Kristin, from the Humane Society's community outreach program, came into the classroom this afternoon and did a presentation on respect. The children listened to a story about a girl and her cat and then met a bearded dragon named, Bandit. Ask your child to tell you about the story and ways they show respect to their pets. Kristin will do two more presentations over the next two weeks. One will be on caring for pets and the other will be about traing pets using positive reinforcement.

Valentines Day
We will have a small Valentines Day celebration on Friday afternoon after lunch. Children may bring cards. Please leave the envelope blank and have your child sign the cards.

Sharing
I encourage the children to share the work that they do in school. They love to share their writing and leveled books that they are using to practice their reading.

More information to follow tomorrow.

January/100th Day

2009-01-30T13:51:00.000-08:00

Thank you everyone for helping your children do such a great job completing the homework packets. Your consistent efforts with establishing and honoring homework time are most appreciated.
Please remember to get homework packets in by the last day of the month. Read Aloud Lists should be completely filled in and all activities in the packet completed. Homework is considered to be part of the curriculum. It is important for children to have a scheduled time and place to work on their homework each day. Establishing a scheduled homework time now will pay off in the years to come.

The January packet includes a book activity. All children are expected to author their own book. They can draw the pictures and dictate or write the words.

On February 12, we are celebrating the 100th day of school. There will be several math activities set up in the auditorium for the children to rotate through. Each class needs parent volunteers to ensure the success of this celebration. A volunteer request form was sent home on Tuesday. So far I have zero volunteers. I can't do this alone. Please check your schedules again. I need at least three volunteers to make this a successful and fun activity for our children. You will have a great time and be finished by 11:00.

Thank you,
Melanie

Math Curriculum

2009-01-16T08:23:00.000-08:00

We are just completing our unit on numbers to ten. The children worked on the following concepts; combining numbers, more than/less than, sequencing, printing and number identification.

Our new focus is geometry and equal parts. We will also begin to work on telling time to the hour. I am sending home an introduction page for each chapter. Look for them in your child's folder.

January

2009-01-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

Over the next few weeks we will be concentrating on the sounds of p, g, f and l. We will also begin working with the short Ii sound, both at the beginning of words and as a medial sound. The animal character in our reading program associated with the sound is "Iggy Iguana". Please look through books and magazines with your child to find pictures of things that begin with or contain the short Ii sound.

In the coming weeks the children will also focus on the following sight words; in, is, me, have, and two. Encourage your child to look for these words whenever you read together, on signs when you are driving, cereal boxes, commercials, and anywhere else you can think of!

Currently, we are working with informational text (nonfiction). We just finished reading "The Mitten" by Jan Brett and will now read informational books about the different animals in the story. Please read a variety of books with your child. Include both fiction and nonfiction.

New Year

2009-01-09T07:40:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to all,

I hope everyone enjoyed the winter break and found some time to relax and renew. Now it's time to get back to the school routine. I would like to use this blog to go over some general information:

Please remember that students are considered tardy if they arrive after the second bell.

P.E. and library are both on Wednesday. Please have borrowed books back to school on Tuesday.

The children planted carrots, onions lettuce and beets before the winter break. Please stop by and take a peek. Everything is beginning to sprout!

We are starting up our afternoon rotations again with room 12 . Miss Allen is teaching social studies and I am teaching science. In science, the children will be learn about wood, paper and fabric. In social studies, Miss Allen will focus on California.

I will post information about math, literacy and writing on Monday.

Have a good weekend,

Ms. Schwab

Holiday Wish

2008-12-19T08:27:00.000-08:00

Dear Room 13 Families,

We would like to wish you all a very happy and restful holiday. Spend some time just relaxing and enjoying the ones who are near and dear to you. There are positively no academic expectations for the next two weeks!

Lion and I are visiting my nephew in Vermont for Christmas and are packing our warmest clothes. We can't wait to go sledding! Bella gets to stay at home with her favorite dog sitter, so she will be just fine until we return.

Wishing all of you a wonderful vacation,

Ms. Schwab and Lion

Literacy update

2008-12-09T08:20:00.000-08:00

I would like to give you an update on sight words and letter sounds we have covered up to this point in the year.

The students have learned the sounds of a (short sound), b, h, m, n, r, s, t and are now working on v.

The sight words the children should know are: a, and, to, I, my, like, see, the and on.

Another focus for this reporting period is onset/rhyme (you may know this concept, as word families). Examples of this are p+at=pat, b+at=bat, c+at=cat, etc. At this point we are working with words that contain the short a sound. Play rhyming games with your child with words that have these endings, ab, ad, ap, at, am, ag.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call, stop by or e-mail me.

Welcome to Room 13's Blog

2008-12-03T15:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Families,
In an attempt to refine my computer skills and become a better communicator, I am now blogging! My plan is to try this idea out on all of you and see what you think. I will be posting information about the curriculum, the standards based report card and what's happening in the classroom on a weekly basis. You are all welcome and in fact, encouraged to respond to my blogs.