January 12-16, 2009

Well, the new year has arrived and we are back to school! WOW, how quickly the Winter Break came to an end! I am excited to be back with the students, believe it or not, I missed them. They ALL brighten my day and make me smile. I do hate to see time off come to an end, however, before we know it, the school year will be over.

As you may have heard, last week our class embarked on new centers during reading time. We are following along with the Daily Five. This is a new way of doing "centers" for reading. Students spend more time reading when doing these centers. I think that these centers will benefit us more than the previous centers we were doing. The student seem to enjoy the 2 centers that I have introduced so far. Hopefully that will continue. Our sound for this week will be -y as in Fly.

We are continuing addition and subtraction through sums of 12. We should wrap this unit up during the week and then begin the next that also has to do with subtraction and fact families. Practice those math facts. I noticed that we had lost a little knowledge in that area, so periodically quiz them on facts that they should know.

I hope that you received the note on Friday(9th) regarding the spelling tests that will be added this semester. These come from our Write Well series, we have been doing these throughout the first semester. There is not a list that can be sent home. We want to know what the students can do with the phonics that they are learning.

Also, on that note was an announcement that told about eliminating the "flip" of the clip prior to being moved to yellow. We will no longer do the "flip", since students have had an opportunity to learn the rules and expectations, students will move directly to yellow if they are found not meeting classroom behavior expectations.

UPCOMING DATES TO REMEMBER:
One day this - week-STAR TESTING
January 13th - PTA meeting
January 15th - Report cards
January 19th - Holiday MLK Birthday
January 21st - 100th day of school
January 22nd and 23rd - Muffins for Moms

Look for the latest DIBELS report and hopefully the STAR test results Thursday with report cards. Sign and return the DIBELS report and one copy of the report card-keep the other. The STAR test is part of the AR program-it will give your child their reading range which will help them to check out books at their level of reading.

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Have a great week!
Ms. Messick