Wednesday, February 04, 2009

February 9, 2009

Check out the FREE opportunity at the Straub Environmental Center for your child at the top right side of the blog! You can also order books online. Directions are on the blog.

Our goal this year at Forest Ridge is to improve students’ writing. I can really tell the great improvement in students’ writing with the students whose parents have helped their child with this assignment this year. It’s not too late to start!! This week’s writing: Think of a time you felt a strong emotion, happiness, anger, hurt, embarrassment, fear, etc. Tell the story behind the emotion. Explain in detail what happened to cause this emotion. Include a beginning, middle, and ending.

Writing together encourages your child to see you having fun with writing, and allows you an opportunity to spend time with your child while he/she learns. Please have your child bring the writing in by Friday.

Students are reviewing 2-digit (second graders) and 3-digit (third graders) subtraction in math. We are also working on multiplication by studying groups of things and multiples.

In health we’ve just begun a unit on the heart.

I hope you have had some opportunities to play “Cover 50”, and the two array games that I sent home last week. If students didn’t bring their arrays back to me, I did not send the game information home. Please make sure your students return the array cards so they don’t get behind in math. Please keep all the games to play at home during the rest of the year.

Spelling homework will be sent home later this week, as well as a “Words to Learn” list. These words will be recycled throughout the year. They’ll probably even show up on another word check that I give later. Almost everyday we work for about 15 minutes on learning spelling patterns, so your child will become a lifetime speller. We don’t just memorize words!

Don’t forget to have your child doing chores earn money to help purchase animals to show caring for impoverished countries. Please have your child bring his/her money in by Friday.

Also don’t forget to have your child select a gently used book to wrap and share with a classmate on Friday. Friday is the Valentine’s Day party.

Take home folders (with reading logs attached) need to be turned in on Thursday.