Newsletter December 9 - December 11

Sorry this is a day late.  Yesterday I had a physical therapy session right after school.  Today we all took the middle of the year DIBELS assessment.  I was VERY pleased with the results.  I told you last week that I would get your those results as soon as I receive them.  I have received them but the reading specialist told me that by law they need to either be sent or delivered by hand.  She said to hand the results to you all during our next SEP conferences, but that isn't until the first of February.  If you would like to know those results before then please send me an e-mail and I can share them that way.  I am really convinced that the amount of support at home is really helping my students this year especially as they improve in reading.

Here are this week's happenings:

• I sent home a note today about our Gingerbread houses and earning $1.00 for a "secret gift".  We have started working on and will finish that "secret gift" this week.  
• I sent home a notice for the PTA reading awards in your child's folder yesterday if they will be receiving an award.  The awards will be this Thursday, at 3:00 in my classroom.  Your are welcome to attend and you can take your child home afterwards if desired.
• In math we have started and will finish our unit on measurement and time this week.  We have been practicing tell time daily with our math wall so this is a review for most of my students.  We will continue to reinforce telling time to the hour and half hour throughout the year.  Next week we will work on graphs (picture graphs, bar graphs, tally charts and solving problems using graphs).  
• In reading we are continuing to work with r-controlled vowels.  We learned /or/ today.  We have learned  many facts about reindeer this week and will be writing sentences about reindeer at the end of the week.  This is an assessment that will be put on mastery connect.  I have  a lot more information on mastery connect or meaning a lot more data on mastery connect than when I showed it during Fall SEP's so you might want to take a look at it.  If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me.  Also in reading we just finished our third version of Little Red Riding Hood and African tale called Tselane.  Next week, I will continue with this theme and read several versions of the Gingerbread Boy. 

Happy Reading!

Mrs. Armstrong