Week of Sept. 25

Hope you enjoyed another long weekend!  The teachers were busy at meetings preparing to better teach your children.  We're looking forward to using our new knowledge.

Special Note:  Popcorn will be sold for $.25 on Friday.  The students should bring their quarter in early so teachers may place their "order."

Remember, breakfast is 7:15- 7:45!  If you want to eat, don't be late!

Studies for the Week:

Reading:  Monitoring Comprehension; Asking Questions
Writing:  Writing information text
Spelling:  Hard and soft g and c
       This weeks words:
cabin, came, cash, circle, cent, circus, giraffe, giant, gym, golden, glue, guy
Math:  Patterns, patterns and more patterns!
Science:  Weather and Air
Social Studies: Types of Communities

College tid bit for the week:


The first college established for African-American students was the Ashmun Institute on April 29, 1854.  It was named after Jehudi Ashmun (1794-1826), an American minister who helped establish Liberia.  In 1866, Ashmun Institute was renamed Lincoln University.

Oberlin college was the first college to grant degrees to women in 1841.  It was also the first college to grant a bachelor degree to an African-American woman in 1862.

Week of Sept. 17

We are now in week 4 of our year together.  We're sure of routines now and authentic learning is starting!

Parents, earlier in the year you should have received by mail your credentials to log onto Parentconnect which is our online gradebook.  If you have any questions about what your student is/is not turning in, or what grade they received on a certain assignment you can find it 24/7 there.  One of the features as part of the site is email.  Would you please log in with your credentials and email me from parentconnect?  Apparently the district wants to make sure this feature is up and running.  You can get to parentconnect by logging onto the school website and clicking on the homepage where it says *View your child's grades.

Please make sure your child is using the bathroom before school. We are losing a lot of instructional time going to the bathroom.
Make time to join us Thursday night at our Healthfair from 6:00-7:00.  Lots of info and free goodies too!
We have next Monday the 24th off for Staff development.
The following Monday Oct 1st we will be off for Fair Day.

This week in our learning
Reading: Nonfiction text features (pictures, captions, graphs, illustrations,etc...)
Math:Addition/Subtraction
Writing: Nonfiction writing
Social Studies: Celebrate freedom (U.S. symbols, important documents)
Science: Air/water fountain, balloon rockets
Spelling: more cvce words

Extra Practice?

There are some really great websites out there to reinforce what we do here in class.  The one I'd like to focus on this week is arcademicskillbuilders.com  This site is great for working on math fluency, being able to recall sums of math facts automatically.  Plus it doesn't hurt that it's fun!

Parents, do you know of any fabulous sites for kids?  I'd love to hear about them.

This year our school is emphasizing going to college by designating every Friday as "wear your college shirt or college colors" day.  We also are learning various facts about the colleges some of our teachers have attended.

Canisius College, located in Buffalo, NY, has a mascot called the Golden Gryff.  Their mascot is like the Gryffindor in the Harry Potter series.

The University of Texas at Austin was founded in 1883.  It currently has an enrollment of 51,245 students.  Can you name a Galloway teacher that graduated from UT? It wasn't Ms. Thompson, I'm an Aggie! by way of Commerce

Wow, that's a lot of students!

Parents, remember that the tardy bell rings at 7:55.  Please have your child here on time!

Individual school pictures will be this Thursday.  Be sure your child is wearing dress code appropriate clothes.

What we are learning:

Comprehension:  Monitoring comprehension; re-read when something doesn't make sense.

Spelling and Phonics:  CVCe words; words that end with an e usually have a long vowel sound. Example:  cake

Math:  Ordering and comparing numbers to 99

Science:  Air

Social Studies: Communities

Have a great week!

I found this cool site of free games at cookie.com  If your child has access to a computer, let me know what you think!

Good News for Public Schools

Just a little FYI for those who think Charter Schools outperform us.


We are having a PTA membership drive.  Green sheets with info were sent home yesterday.  We would love to have 100 % class participation (we earn a popcorn party).  Dues are $7 per year.  If any of you are interested in helping out with the board or volunteering your time for other activities, reading to/listening to a student read, running copies for teachers, I would be more than happy to pass your info on to our PTA president.  This is my first year to serve on the board both as a parent of a sixth grader and a second grade teacher, and I am so excited to see what great things we will do this year.

I had some parents ask about Book order forms.  About once a month I will send home an order form for you to look over.  If there is something you would like, you can send cash or check to the school with the filled in form or you can order online at Scholastic.com with the code on the back of the form.  The great thing about the new online ordering is that you can access different catalogs so if you have someone who is above/below grade level you have easy access to books that are just right for them.  (Plus, they tell me for every online order we get free books for the classroom SCORE!) This is through the same company that does our book fair, but this way we aren't limited to twice a year for some great cheap books.  Each month they even offer a couple dollar books.  If you have any questions feel free to email/phone/stop me in the hall.  It's new to me too, so we can work through it together.  I'm mailing off the first order tomorrow. (The kids that have turned in money keep asking me if I've sent it off yet...LOL).

One more thing, I got the gradebook working this afternoon, so be expecting to see some graded papers come home next week.

As always, ever grateful
 Ms. T