Our fall party will be at 2:00 on Friday, October 31st. Costumes may be worn for the party and regular clothing worn to school. We will change into costumes at 1:45. The costume should be a simple costume that your child can put on over their clothing and should not include any type of weapon. Please save make-up, face paint, or hair dye for evening trick or treating with your family. Students are welcome to bring wrapped store-bought treats to pass out to their classmates at the end of the party. We have 23 students in our class.
It is exciting for children to see where their teacher lives. If you are able, I would love to see the children at my house. My address is 1321 Aster Circle in the Briarwood subdivision. I will have a special treat for all those who come and will bring treats to school on Monday for those who are unable to make it.
Homework
Thank you for all you do to support learning at home. The students have been doing on excellent job on completing and returning Friday homework in a timely manner. Many of the papers your child brings home daily are from independent practice activities in reading, writing and math. I do my best to keep up with checking work and writing comments. Although this work is not required homework I encourage you to take the time to discuss the work as often as you can. You should clearly be able to notice progress in the work over time. Try to give specific feed back such as:
- "I notice how neat your handwriting is today."
- "You solved very challenging problems today."
- "You are using capital and lowercase letters appropriately in your sentences."
- "You are learning to read sight words."
- "You are adding details to your writing and using interesting words."
Independent Practice
Independent practice activities allow me the opportunity to work with small groups of students. The benefit to this model is that it allows me to focus instruction at exactly the right level for each student. The children are doing a great job of focusing and staying on task so that I am able to meet with groups every day. In between each group a short focus lesson is taught to the entire class. Although this is very different than the way school was when you or I were in kindergarten it has proven to be very effective in reaching our goal of yearly progress. The end of the first trimester is on November 14th. Report cards will be sent home the following week and will give you an idea of how your child is progressing in each subject area.