February Newsletter

February 2012

Dear Parents/Families of Students in Room 209,

Can you believe its February already? The school year seems to be whizzing by and your students have made it a joy!  Miss Magnuson, our student teacher, is now teaching as the lead teacher with Mrs. Allen’s support Monday-Thursday and the students have gotten into a rhythm with this change. On Friday, Miss Magnuson attends courses at WSU Vancouver and Mrs. Allen teaches. Miss Magnuson will be filming some of her lessons in the upcoming weeks so she can perfect her teaching. If you have questions about this, please feel free to ask!

Life skills and Class Community Issues This month we will feature the life skills of honesty/integrity.  We will use our daily class meetings to explore these attributes and compliment our classmates for their use of these.

Writing:  We just finished drafting a mock MSP narrative and more information will be coming home with your student about this.  We focused on using a writing plan to create these stories. Next, we will be going deeper with expository writing.  We’ve learned that expository writing has DEARFD (descriptions, examples, anecdotes, reasons, facts, and definitions) and we will be learning how to add those to our writing to accurately explain our topic.  Next week we will begin our draft for a Valentine’s letter to someone special to explain three ways that person is appreciated or is special.  We will use DEARFD to help support our ideas in this letter. We will work on going deep with our elaboration and description.  Please continue to reinforce the importance of good editing and revising skills at home.  Encourage the use of dictionaries and checking all written work carefully after completion.

Reading:  This month will be continuing our focus on inferring.  To make an inference, we use text clues and what we already know (our background knowledge) to make conclusions about what the author wants us to know or learn from the text.  Our reading equation for this is TC (text clues) + BK (background knowledge) = Inference.  We are focusing on inferring the big ideas the author wants us to know but doesn’t tell us directly.  The winter book report is due February 24^th. Doing this, will ensure students have enough time to work on their rough draft and then the final copy.  We would like to see their rough draft by February 16^th (This is an editted date as the 17th is a no school day) and when they show us their rough draft, we will give them their final copy paper.  Then students will still have a week to complete their final copy of their book report.  We’re using these dates and reminders to help teach students time management.   Encourage best writing on the book report including strong supporting details, excellent spelling, and punctuation.  Students should use a black pen to trace over all words on their book report then erase any pencil marks that remain.  The book report should be final copy/published quality work with full coloring on any sketches.  No white spaces in the area where the sketches are.  Please keep encouraging your child to be reading their chapter books to reach their goal of reading at least 500 pages by the end of the trimester. Their reading should be a mix of silent reading and reading aloud with some feedback from you.  Reading silently helps students think deeply and visualize the events in the book and reading aloud with feedback improves reading rate and fluency.  At the end of each book, your child should be filling out a High Five Book Club summary by writing a short summary of the book to demonstrate they have read the book entirely and then turning it in for credit.  Ask your child where they are with this goal for the trimester.  We HIGHLY encourage students to write up their book report book as well.

Math:   This week we will begin our exploration of area. We will start by finding the area of irregular shaped objects such as one’s hand or foot and then move into rectangular objects. We want students to see the connections between arrays and finding area.  Daily practice with math facts for 10-15 minutes is important to ensure progress with this concept.  We can’t stress enough that knowing these facts are instrumental to learning more advanced concepts and feeling confident in math. Thanks again to all math fact parent helpers for their help with math facts weekly!  Toward the end of the month, we will be moving into working with fractions: identifying, drawing, putting them on a number line, and beginning to find equivalents.

Social Studies/Science:  In Social Studies, we will continue our learning about Lewis and Clark, the Corp of Discovery, and Sacagawea and their role in westward movement.  Then we will turn our focus to learning about fur trappers and traders.  We will also begin to study Pioneers and their movement to the West. In science, we are continuing our study of environments and continuing to nurture and observe the terrariums growing in our classroom. This week we will be adding some Beetles and Isopods to the terrariums and observing how they adapt to the environment.

Important Days in February:  There is no school on 2/17 and 2/20 for President’s Weekend.  There are also two half days set aside in March for parent conferences: the 13^th, 15^th, and 16th.    Miss Magnuson and Mrs. Allen will set up conferences with students and parents to address any concerns that we are having.    Please don’t be alarmed if we contact you (sometimes we conference with parents about keeping a student challenged and exceeding standards!J)  If you would like to request a conference with us during that time, you are welcome to.  Just send an email or give us a call at 604-6650 x 2569.   

Valentine’s Day At Fisher’s Landing Elementary:   Students are welcome to bring Valentines to hand out at the very end of the day on February 14^th as long as they bring a Valentine for everyone in our class.  This will be very low key (classes only have 3 celebrations a year and we have already had 2- the last will be our end of the year celebration). Please send your child with their valentines in a grocery sack to school on Tuesday, February 14th so they can use it to take home their exchanged Valentines.  We will do some fun Valentine activities throughout the day so the kids will feel like they are celebrating even though we’re not having a “party.” 

We so enjoy working with your students!  They are such a kind and special group! 

Warmest regards,

Karri Allen and Lara Magnuson