Monday, April 20, 2009

Counseling Survey

Dear Parents,

The State of Missouri Department of Education requires each district to do a counseling survey every 3 years. There is a link, for parents, to get to the survey on our schools home page. Just complete the teacher/parent survey. It will only take 5-10 minutes, very short!! You will be recieving a letter from Mrs. Woodall explaining this survey.

Thank you.

Our Field Trip is Coming!

Field Trip

Just a reminder, tomorrow (Friday 17th) is our 1st grade field trip to the puppet theater in Marshfield. We will have a picnic at the park afterwards, so dress your child appropriately. Also remember to send your child with a lunch and a drink unless you signed up to purchase a sack lunch from school. Finally, don’t be late to school :) We are planning on leaving around 9:00 to go have a wonderful time learning about puppets!


EAST EXTRAVAGANZA IS COMING…

Mark your calendars now for this family event that always proves to be a lot of fun! Join us on May 1st for dinner, a student art show, 4th grade STOMP performance and more! Of course the highlights of the evening will be the BOX TOP CHALLENGE and the BASKET AUCTIONS! The book fair will be open in the library as well! Be on the look out for more details to come soon.

Ask your child about….

Our mixed up week because of the MAP test, how we helped encourage Mrs. Hall’s 4th graders, the great MAP assembly on Monday, and our MAP cheer tunnel, also ask about...Click, Clack Moo, Cows That Type, writing letters to Farmer Brown, reading our Spring Break stories to the class, deciding if things are certain or impossible.

Practice, Practice, Practice...

Counting coins up to 50 cents, the list of sight words, reading fluently, asking and answering questions after a book is read.

Dates to Remember...

April 17th—Field Trip
April 24th—Principal Miller reads on the roof all day! : )
May 1st—East Extravaganza and Tiger Pride Assembly
May 12– Field Day (let me know if you would like to volunteer to help)
May 22– Last Day

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Happy Easter!

Clarification

I had a mistake on the April Helper calendar that came home at the first of the month. I listed our snow make up day and our day off incorrectly. We will not have school tomorrow, Friday, April 10; but we do have school on Monday, April 13th. Sorry for any confusion.

EAST EXTRAVAGANZA IS COMING…

Mark your calendars now for this family event that always proves to be a lot of fun! Join us on May 1st for dinner, a student art show, 4th grade STOMP performance and more! Of course the highlights of the evening will be the BOX TOP CHALLENGE and the BASKET AUCTIONS! The book fair will be open in the library as well! Be on the look out for more details to come soon.

Don’t Forget…

Field trip permission slips were due today. If you haven’t sent your child’s yet, please send it on Monday.

Ask your child about….

Our fun partner day, The MAP Cheer, writing encouraging notes to Mrs. Hall’s 4th grade class for the MAP test, the /ch/ sound, how good readers wonder about things while they are reading, measuring, finding the perimeter, what the area measures, weighing with scales, finding how much something holds, sinking and floating, and thermometers.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Counting coins up to 50 cents, the list of sight words, reading fluently, asking and answering questions after a book is read.
Enjoy the 3 day Easter weekend. Don't eat too many jelly beans!!

Big News

Fiddler, No, Principal On the Roof

Mrs. Miller has set Friday, April 24 as the day she will sit on the roof reading with purple hair. The last money amount I heard from the Read-a-Thon was $5300. Great Job! Plan on stopping by the school on the 24th to wave at Mrs. Miller.

End of the Year

As we get close to the end of the year, we are really working hard on reading fluently, comprehending what we are reading, writing sequenced stories , using capitals and punctuation correctly, adding and subtracting quickly, counting money, and understanding the calendar. Thank you as always for all the extra help and practice you give your child at home. If we all work together, great things happen.

Ask your child about...

Measuring with blocks, paper clips, inches, and feet, what we did with the 3 types of matter, the Tiger Pride assembly, taking turns adding onto our book retelling (hoping not to be the last name called), beginning to write our sequence story all about spring break, our poem "What Can You Do?", the sounds -er, -ir, -ur, -ar, and -or make.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Welcome Back

Welcome back from Spring Break!! I hope you had a restful and enjoyable week. This week: In math--we will begin our measurement unit; we will begin by measuring with non-standard units and then switch to standard inches and centimeters. In reading--we will be focusing on giving detailed and sequenced retellings of the books we read. This is an important component of reading comprehension. In writing--we will plan and write sequenced stories with a beginning, middle, and end. We will focus on correct capitalization and punctuation. In science--we will continue our discussions from our Monday All Science Day. We will discuss and experiment with the 3 phases of matter. It looks to be a busy week.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Reminders:

March 11, 2009

Dear Parents,

Just a reminder that Read-a-thon packets are due by Friday. The child who turns in the most money for Read-a-thon will get to have pizza with Principal Miller. The child who read the most minutes will earn a Sonic lunch in the room with me next Monday. Remember to turn in your packets! We want to put Mrs. Miller on the roof by making at least $4000 as a school!

Report cards will go home tomorrow. I will be here for conferences next Thursday evening (19th). If you would like to have a conference, but have not yet requested one, give me a call or send me an email. I still have available times and would be happy to visit with you.

Next Tuesday, March 17th is our 1st grade music program. We will perform a school program at 2:30 and then for the parents at 7:00. Please have your child to my class room at 6:45. At that time, you may go find yourself a seat in the gym. (If you would like to arrive earlier in order to get a good seat, I ask that you keep your child with you until 6:45. I will not be in my room until 6:45, so the children will be unattended if you send them earlier.) I will watch the class until time for the program and take them down to the multi-purpose room for you. All of the children are supposed to wear their green Willard East t-shirt for our programs. That will work perfectly for St. Patrick’s Day!

Have a great rest of the week!

Your partner in education,
Mrs. Newman



Ask your child about: "talking about books", reading our Kirsten books, naming the coins and telling how much each is worth, counting coins (pennies, nickels, and dimes) together, writing the very exciting fiction stories for Mrs. Newman to read at home in her jammies and slippers :), what sound double letters make in a word, our new spelling dictionaries, and telling time to the hour and half hour.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Friday, February 27, 2009

Read-A-Thon
Information is coming home today about The Willard East Read-A-Thon. This is our spring fund raiser. The school goal is to raise $4,000 by just getting pledges and reading! The 1st grader’s goal is 200 minutes of reading over a 7 day period. We will be reading at school also and those minutes will count towards the total minutes. Even though we read all day long at school, we will only be counting the children’s independent reading time and the end of the day chapter book read aloud time. This will average around 30 minutes each day or around 150 minutes of school reading time. This only leaves 50 minutes of reading time for the students to earn at home (you may certainly read more). We are hoping that each child in our class will be able to reach the goal of 200 minutes! So, begin reading and recording minutes, and collecting pledges. You have until the 13th to get your records and money turned in. As an extra incentive, I will be eating a Sonic lunch on Monday the 16th with the student from our class who reads the largest amount of minutes (not who collects the most money) during our read-a-thon. Thank you for helping us out!

Field Trip
The 1st grade will be taking a field trip to a puppet theater on April 17th. Permission slips and more information will be coming soon. We just wanted to let parents know ahead of time that, due to the set up of the theater, we will not be needing adult chaperones. We didn’t want you to be saving a vacation day and then be disappointed (however, you could save it instead for our Field Day Activities in May)

Ask Your Child About:
Our new chapter book, our animal writing projects, editing and revising during writing, place value in numbers (hundreds, tens, and ones), what number comes before or after another, putting numbers in order from least to greatest (ie. 13, 43, 89), counting by 2’s to 50, and On Top of Spaghetti.