Learning is a blast!

All students have completed their research of their culture. We will be using that information to complete the About Me and About My Family paragraphs in class. Students may wish to bring these paragraphs home and type them out. I will be providing time for students to begin their posters in class this week. They will bring them home this Thursday for completion. You can help your child by finding pictures for his/her poster.

We have launched into our science unit on Stars & Planets. So far we have looked closely at the sun and the moon. Students will be bringing home a moon calendar on Friday, October 14. If you are able, have your child make several moon observations (it does not have to be every night) and draw a picture of the moon phase they observe. Hopefully, they will see almost a full cycle of the moon's phases. If you are unable to  view the moon, you can also check out a website on the computer to see what the moon will look like tonight.

http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/vphase.html

Please return this calendar to school by November 15. Thanks!

Reach for the Stars! This is our school-wide home reading program. Many students have already returned a sheet and received a special bookmark from Ms. Cameron. If your child is reading every night, but may have trouble completing a recording sheet, please let me know through the planner. Our objective is to create readers. It would be great to have everyone receive at least one sticker.

This week we completed the school-wide write. Students were asked to write about their Thanksgiving/Long weekend. These samples give teachers valuable information about your child's strengths as a writer and areas that I can focus on in writing instruction for improvement. I will be assessing these writing samples in the next week and will contact you if I have any concerns about a student's progress.

Help needed! I am looking for a volunteer to find a class set of film canisters for later on in our science unit. I need the clear ones (where the lid snaps inside the cylinder). We will be making rockets attached to the film canisters and blasting them off using alka-seltzer tablets. This is always a great science experiment. Please let me know if you can locate 24 canisters for our class. Thanks!