Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a fun and restful holiday and winter break! I do hope all your New Year's wishes come true! We are underway and hopefully refreshed to learn more and work hard. I think our snowflakes hanging in our room helped to bring in the cooler temperatures. YEA!!

Thank you to all of you who came to our Writer's Celebration prior to the vacation. The children loved being able to share their writing pieces. I will be adding these labors of love to each child's electronic portfolio. At the end of the year, some of their writing pieces will come home while others will stay in their writing folders to share with their next teacher.

I know this week is a short week, but we are trying to stick to our schedule as best we can. There will be a spelling test on Friday. The children also have their Reading Comprehension Activity due on Friday as well. The children will learn about idioms by reading about how the Star-Spangled Banner was created.

Our Spelling words this week are called "Must Know" Words. These are words that the children are frequently misspelling in their writing. On Friday's test, they will have to write 4 sentences using these words. So while they are reviewing the spelling of the word, they can begin thinking about a descriptive sentence as well so that they are better prepared on Friday.

PLEASE help the children come to school this week with at least 3 newly sharpened pencils and at least one new red sharpened marking pencil.

We will continue our reading work in our class novel, The Whipping Boy. You will begin to see some activities coming home for homework that relates to the story.

We are continuing in our history book. We are going to pick up our timeline at the Ice Age after discussing in class about the importance of history in chapter one prior to the holiday.

We are continuing our work on place value in math. We will review numbers and their place values by learning about the US Census. Please continue to practice the multiplication tables. Tomorrow the children have a quiz on the 6's. From this point forward, many of these quizzes count as a grade and the children can earn their stickers.

I will be conducting some formal reading assessments over the next two weeks. This will help me gauge what the progress is in reading and perhaps what lessons I need to reteach or develop to further improvement.

Thank you all again for your generous gifts and kind words before the winter break. You are all appreciated more than you know!

Tonight's homework responsibilities are as follows:
Spelling...study "Must Know" words for test on Friday
Reading Comprehension Sheet...A Star-Spangled Banner due on Friday
Math...Home Link 5.1 and 5.2 and study 6's multiplication table
Wordly Wise...study Lesson 6 words for test on Thursday
Bring in good sharpened pencils if needed