February 29 - March 4

Happy Leap Day!  I am back in the saddle after catching the sickness that is rampant.  I still don't have a voice, but am feeling a bit better.  Thanks to Mrs. Vogel for helping sub my class.  They were taught well in my absence. 

Here are this week's happenings:

• Friday it's Spring picture day.  I sent home an information packet last week.  Your child's picture will ONLY be taken if you send back money.
• Our next spelling test is this Thursday, March 3.  I sent home a list of words to practice today.  We are learning about the /j/ sound spelled three different ways--'j', 'g', and 'ge'.  You will see that applied in this week's spelling words.  We are also learning about adding endings to root words so you will see the apparent in the words also (jumping, charged).  
• The end of third quarter is March 25.  I will try my hardest to get a grade print out of this quarter's grades by this Friday before we have Spring break.  
• Our plants have grown like crazy.  They are starting to get little yellow flowers on them.  Today we talked about the parts of a flower and the purposes of each part.  This week we will also discuss pollination.  We will have "actual" dried bees and we'll "pollinate" our plants.  
• In math we just finished Lesson 8.5.  We have learned to use a hundreds chart and to draw a picture to add "ones" or "tens" to a two-digit number.  I feel like most of my students are understanding this concept.  Please keep up with the Chapter 8 homework packet.  You should be through Lesson 8.5 today.  
• I could still use some pencil top erasers.  As I mentioned last week, we are totally out and we could use some more packages to get us through the school year.  I could also use Lysol or Clorox wipes.  With all of the sicknesses going around those are helpful to quickly clean off desks, tables, chairs etc.  
• I hope that you all have a wonderful Spring break!  We still have several weeks of school left, so please don't slack off with nightly reading.  Our End of the year DIBELS testing will be before we know it and in order to "benchmark" students need to be reading 47 words accurately in a minute.  That's a big jump from the middle of the year cut off of 23 words. Practice, practice, by reading, reading and more reading!!