Welcome Back!

I am so excited to be back in school, and today we had a fantastic day.

Today was a "warm-up" type day where we reviewed what school behavior and routines look like and feel like. We were blessed with a reading of Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse written by Kevin Henkes and read by Mr. Stroup. It was fun to have him in our room first thing this morning sharing a story with each of us. Every student got a copy of the book and we practiced intonation (sounding like the character while reading).

During writing workshop we were able to relax into writing stories that we were already working on or new stories. Some stories are about Christmas, X0Bot, Sea Animals, and Pokemon.
We reviewed sorting by visual characteristics in math today and will be moving on to learning about fractions in the next few days.
Social studies is really exciting this week. We are learning about symbols of America and this week we are focusing on the Statue of Liberty. We explored the Statue of Liberty by watching a few short videos, reading books, and exploring some interactive websites. Students also got the opportunity to learn how to use their flash drives for the first time. If you haven't sent a flash drive in with your child please do so if you can. We will be using them from this point onward quite often.

Thinking Forward:

• If your child has been invited to the morning reading class please remember to come Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 8AM.
• Please send a flash drive to school with your child if you have not yet.
• Our reading focus this month will be: schema (background knowledge and connections) and fluency (reading like we talk).
• Our writing focus this month will be: writing complete sentences (capitals at the beginning of a sentence and for proper nouns) and beginning to write with paragraphs.
• Our math focus this month will be: fractions and geometry.
• Our social studies focus this month will be: symbols of the United States (Statue of Liberty and Mt. Rushmore) and beginning economics.

• I am throwing around the idea of how to do typing club again. I am trying to figure out a schedule that would work and if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear suggestions.
  
• I would also like to put some feelers out and find out if I offered another "How to Blog" class for students and parents would there be any takers, and would before or after school be better?
  

I would love to hear from more of you. Feel free to pipe up here in the comments section or in your own post.