Eighty-Fourth Day of School

A quote from blogs-past:

"FYI: A book was read about Santa Mouse (a treasury from childhood) to the children. A child asked after the story 2 was finished the other day, 'Are you sure that's true?' Hmm....So the legend goes, that if you should happen to find a small (tiny) gift tucked somewhere in your tree, perhaps tied with a yellow bow, then you will know that Santa Mouse has been to your house. *Shrugs* I don't know, it's just what I heard. Who knows how these stories get started?"

No questions were asked as in years passed; maybe all was accepted as fact *shrugs*.

Eighty-Second Day of School

No homework tonight.

We will take Topic 7 Math Test on Thursday.

If you would like to donate a treat to our holiday celebration, contributions are greatly appreciated. District guidelines dictate that treats should be store bought. Setup for the occasion will begin around 11:30 on Friday.

Topic 6 Test Results

Of 20 scored tests, 15 passed with an adjusted score of 10 or better; 6 were perfect scores and 2 missed only one.

Seventy-Fourth Day of School

The district tests we are presently taking measure students' current fluency and retell ability as well some basic decoding readiness.

The first grade teachers have decided that first graders will wear dark (black) colored pants and a white top for the winter performance.

Students have in their possession the 4th stanza of our poem to be memorized. The fifth stanza will likely be brought home on Wednesday (time permitting), leaving only one stanza to be brought home next week (the second stanza in proper order).

Unit 3 Week 4 Preview

We will be discussing how we can be creative and resourceful and likewise how the characters in our selections exhibit these characteristics and what it is that inspires them. Our vocabulary words for this week are create, hobby, inspire, resourceful, structure. Among our selections this week is a fantasy by Harry Horse called A Friend for Little Bear, in which a resourceful toy bear learns the importance of friends over collecting possessions. Another selection is Karen Lynn Williams' story Galimoto about a resourceful child in Africa who has to make his own toys from found objects.

Our comprehension strategy will be making inferences in order to draw conclusions, our comprehension skill. Our sight words will be after done, find, old, new, work.

We will also be working on our midyear reading assessment battery.

We will continue with final silent 'e' long vowel spellings for the remaining vowels along with open syllable long vowels as well as the remaining stanza of our vowel poem.

In Science we will be beginning our unit on weather.

In Visual Arts we will focus on color as a second element of art.

In Drama, we will continue with characterization and working from a script.

Unit 3 Week 3 Preview

Our focus this week related to the theme is having fun while creating. Some students will work on creating a riddle/joke book for an additional Unit Project. We will encode and decode with the digraphs ch, tch, wh, ph. Our sight words this week are every, from, into, people, soon, your. Oral vocabulary words are original, talented, astonishing, complicated, continue. We will summarize for a comprehension strategy using main ideas and details for a comprehension skill.

In Social Science we continue to compare the past and the present.

We will begin our mid-year reading evaluation this week.