January 30th Newsletter

Dear Parents and Guardians,

This week will be an exciting one in literacy in our classroom!  Last week we finished up our first informational writing piece, which will come home soon.  Everyone worked very hard to tell facts about the topic they chose.  (By the way learning about what a topic is, choosing one and then telling facts we know about that topic was a lot to learn!  We are so proud of them!)  We also worked hard to name our topic in the beginning and organize the different parts onto different pages.  This is an early step that will really help them to understand the genre of informational writing better, as well as with paragraphing in their own writing later on.  

This week we put everything we've learned to the test as we will be assigned the task of working with a partner to create a poster for a variety of different Arctic animals at the (pretend) zoo.  We will be including facts, considering illustrations & labels, and even using headings to help the reader understand.  

Our students seem to really love informational writing.  Try encouraging your son or daughter to write an informational book at home.  They don't have to do hours of research, just have them write about something they know a lot about!  Animals, sports and activities work great!  We're beginning to understand more about glossaries, some students might even include them in their next piece!  How exciting to see the growth happening!  

In math, we are going to continue using name collection boxes.  We will also be practicing our fact families and learning about fact triangles.  The Unit 6 Family Letter was sent home last Friday.  Look for Home Links 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4 to come home this week.  Again this week our math home links were copied on white instead of yellow.  Sorry about the confusion!  Please keep the fact triangle home link (6.4) at home so that your child can practice with the fact triangles.  Remember to keep practicing addition and subtraction facts at home.  This quarter we will be working on facts all the way up to 16.

Scholastic book orders are due Monday, February 20th. You can go online to order www.scholastic.com/bookclubs and type in the Online Code: JBVLX, or you can send the order form and money to school with your child.

Special Points of Interest

• Thorson Winter Carnival this Saturday!