January 20 - 23, 2009

I am so impressed with our class. We have started some new Literacy centers and they have taken to them so easily. I am very proud of how well the new centers work and the students are enjoying them.

As I said, we have started new literacy centers and the students love them. Ask your student about what is going on in our classroom. We will finish up the introduction of the new centers this week, by introducing Writing and Listening. Students should be familiar with these already, as we have used both of these centers previously. This week in whole group will be discussing L as in Letter. We will talk about how to write a letter and why we would need to write a letter. We will also talk about lions, along with other words beginning with l.

In Math this week, we will venture into chapter 14. This chapter will take us into subtraction and give us new strategies to solving subtraction problems. On Friday, we will do many activities that involve the number 100, since it will be the 100th day of school.

Grammar this week will cover pronouns and use of pronouns. Students will need to be able to identify pronouns and the noun that it refers to. We will take a Daily Language Review (DLR) quiz this Friday (Jan. 23). Please study the DLR sheets that we do throughout the week, as the quiz comes directly from the daily sheets. Your student should be bringing these sheets home in their B.E.E. books daily.

THIS WEEK:
January 19th - Holiday MLK Birthday
January 23rd - 100th day of school
January 22nd and 23rd - Muffins for Moms

I realize we have not changed our B.E.E. books out yet. I have had some family things going on and have not had time to take care of the preliminary work. I will do my best this week to take care of changing out the B.E.E. books. I know that I will not be at school on Thursday, so please just bear with me. I am praying for good news with the family issues this week!

I also want to tell you about the Library issue. I know that you all want your students to go to the library, as do I. I have not been stopping them from going, the library has been closed, a lot, since we returned to school. The check-out system changed and there was work that needed to be done in the library before the students could check out books. Once that was taken care of, the librarian needed to check books out to individual classes to insure there were no problems with any one's account. She finished that and then there was Class picture day, Teacher Treat day and there were power problems in the 3rd and 4th grade trailers on Friday (1/16)...all activities involved using the library, which meant that it had to be closed to students. I am hoping that this week will allow for a full week of library check-out! Don't worry about BookIt, I will deal with credits for this at the end of the month.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Hope that you have a wonderful week!

Ms. Messick