11/28 We have three weeks of school before our two week break in December. For the first two
weeks, we'll be learning about suffixes and prefixes, starting a new personal narrative writing
project, and learning about Native Americans. We'll continue to have LEGO/Robotics on Mondays
with our new engineer, Jeff Brown; and gardening on Thursdays with the volunteer gardeners. Our
November Sharkie reading logs are due on Tuesday, December 1st.
11/22 We had a great visit with Raquel Romano on Friday. She was born in Mexico and moved to
the U.S. when she was in 2nd grade. She got her degree from Harvard and her Ph.D from M.I.T.
She talked to our class about the importance of paying attention in school and becoming very good
at math. She also said nightly dinner table conversations are very helpful.
Thank you all for coming to school last week for your conference. I appreciated the time you spent
with me.
On Monday we'll have our first LEGO/Robotics session with an engineer. Yippee! We'll also have
our first visit to the new computer lab. On Tuesday we'll have our monthly session with Coach
Angel and we'll pop popcorn.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
11/15 On Friday I met a Google engineer, Jeff Brown, who will be volunteering in our class for
LEGO/Robotics. He'll join us for our next session on 11/23. This Friday we're having a visit from
another Google engineer, Raquel Romano. She's going to tell us about her schooling and how she
decided to become an engineer. Parents, you are welcome to join us for her brief talk at 9:00 am
on Friday, 11/20.
11/4 Today we'll have our Vision Screening. Please sign up for a conference time if you haven't
yet. Parent teacher conference week is November 16-20th. Students will be dismissed at 11:20 all
five days that week. Thank you.
10/18 This week we'll continue to work on rounding numbers. We're starting unit 2 in Open
Court--City wildlife. We'll begin our first science unit on energy. On Monday we have an Ability
Awareness assembly and LEGO/Robotics. On Thursday, we'll have a walk with an arborist and our
first Student of the Month assembly.
9/30 It's hard to believe it's the end of September already. Wow, has this month flown by!
Tomorrow, 10/1, Reading is Cool begins. Your child can write down the number of pages in each
book s/he reads to him or herself or to a younger sibling, cousin, or friend. At the end of each
month, I'll email our total number of pages read to the Sharks and the class that reads the most
will win a visit from Sharkie.
Tomorrow our class will have the Environmental Volunteers. This is an in-class field trip where we
learn about birds, owls, and other wildlife with hands-on activities.
We're giving the CELDT reading and writing test this week. We're starting to learn rounding,
counting by 4's, and learning the overcurve letters in cursive.
9/12 The week of the 14th is a big week for us. We will go to our first Starting Arts Music class,
we'll check out our first Acc Reader books from the library, we'll start gardening, and we'll have our
first Lego/Robotics session. In between all of that, we'll keep reading, learning new words,
memorizing math facts, and begin to learn about rounding numbers. We'll also be learning about
natural geographic features and man-made physical features in California.
9/5 We're off to a great start. We have an enthusiastic group of students and hard workers in our
class. We're building up our reading stamina and practicing fluency. In math, we're reviewing the
plus and minus facts, place value, and odd and even numbers. We're counting by 3's in
preparation for memorizing the multiplication facts. In Social Studies we are reviewing continents
and oceans and studying geography.
8/27 Welcome to a new school year. School begins at 8:00 am on Thursday, August 27th. That
will be a full day until 2:15. Friday, August 28th we'll start again at 8:00 but it's a half day ending
at 12:30 pm. Please have your child bring a backpack to school. If your child needs a snack
between breakfast and lunch, please send a small nutritious snack. I'll provide a water bottle for
each student to keep at his or her desk.
At home, your child will need a quiet, well-lit place to do homework with binder paper, pencils,
and a pencil sharpener.
I look forward to meeting you very soon.
