Newsletter March 9 - March 13

Happy first day of Daylight Savings (not my favorite, until summer rolls around).  This is the last week of our third quarter.  I'm always astounded how fast the second half of the year goes by.

Here are this week's happenings:

• We collected enough money for the ballet and have some extra to pad our field trip fund for the remainder of the year.  Thank you so much for the extra help!  We will send home a note in the next couple of weeks outlining our final field trips and ask for a lump sum to cover those trips.  Just as a heads up we will be going to the play Once Upon a Mattress at SUU in April, and then to the Aquatic Center and St. George Children's museum and carousel ride in May.  For the ballet we will be leaving East at 9:20 and walking to the Heritage Center Theater and return around 11:00.  
• PTA reading awards will be this Thursday at 3:00 in our classroom.  I sent notes home today for those that will be receiving an award.  They are in your child's folder.
• Our 100-book challenge is in full swing.  Congratulations to Harper for being the first to read 100 books!  Students have until the middle of May to complete this challenge.
• Last week we wrote Rainforest Habitat paragraphs.  They are hanging outside of our classroom with our jaguar art.  I was very pleased with the paragraphs and am amazed at the progress we have made in writing over this year.  Our next paragraphs will center around opinions rather than facts, but will follow the same format of an opening sentence, followed by sentences to support that, and ending with a closing sentence. We are finishing up Unit 5 this week in reading and have a few more stories to read in Kate's book.  Today we read Two Good Things and One Bad--ask your child why the story had that title. 😀
• In math we are working on numbers with 1 ten and some ones (i.e. 15 or 19).  It's a bit difficult for first graders at first to understand one group of ten is not 10 tens, but I think we have crossed that hurdle in the past couple of days.  I used a 100-book challenge note on Friday to help "show" them that we just had 1 note, but ten books on the note and related that to 1 group of ten.  This week we will model tens (numbers like 20 or 50) and then move to multiple groups of tens and ones (43 or 56).  Students will model these numbers and then write the numerical representation. During our intervention time on Wednesday students will be working with counting on by 10 in their respective groups.  Some will receive enrichment with that concept others will be given extra guidance with that concept.  
• Today we started our unit on Astronomy.  We barely got into discussing the earth's atmosphere and outer space.  We will learn about the earth, planets, stars, the moon, constellations, and the sun to name a few.  My students were excited today as we began our discussion. 
• Don't forget that we have next Monday and Tuesday off before 4th quarter begins.  I will actually be gone the following Thursday and Friday for a conference in Salt Lake City with other team leaders from East.  I'm really excited about it as it will help with our intervention groups that we have incorporated this year.  

Happy Reading!

Mrs. Armstrong