Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful, relaxing and rejuvenating winter break! I’m looking forward to a full week with the kids so that we can get back in the swing of things. Here are a couple things to keep in mind:

1) Congratulations to the four students who completed the winter break reading challenge! (Liran, Gavi, Ayla and Samantha) I’m so proud of the extra effort put forth. I will also send home a spring break reading challenge for those who were unable to complete the winter challenge.
2) Congratulations to the 4 students who have finished the cursive handwriting book! Shaina, Gabi, and Ella are now cursive masters and are writing daily work in cursive. Two more students are very close to finishing…..hopefully by the end of this week, I can hand out more certificates of completion!
3) Reader’s Response- Your child will be doing more writing in the evening for homework. There will be a reader’s response done two or three nights each week. The prompt is different each day and can be found written in their homework planner. The response is to be written in the black and white marble notebook. The reader’s response is a way for me to monitor comprehension, hold kids accountable for nightly reading, and to implement more writing practice. It forces kids to interact and think deeply about the text, rather than just reading to ‘get it done’. The response should only take between 5-10 minutes. If you are finding that it’s taking much longer, please let me know and I will help your child do this in a more succinct fashion.
4) Science- we are now delving into habitats and biomes of the world. We have looked at animal adaptations and behaviors, read about basic needs for survival, investigated what makes a biome, and much more. Our field trip to Discovery Place was a nice start to this unit and our upcoming field trip to Tiger World will continue to educate the kids on specific habitats, animal needs for survival, and more. In PBL, the kids will be creating a ‘Biome in a Box’ which will reflect the specific populations (plants and animals), communities, and characteristics of the chosen biome. I will share more details about the project as we roll it out!
5) Midyear assessments are coming up next week. I look forward to seeing growth in reading, writing and spelling for all the kids.
6) Vocabulary- we are beginning the vocabulary curriculum I discussed at curriculum night. In each unit of study, there is a reading passage that contains the 10 unit words. The kids will then learn more about the words, including their definitions, pronunciations, parts of speech, and how they are used in sentences. They will also find synonyms and antonyms of the given words. Each unit is about 8 pages in length, and concludes with a short 20 question, multiple choice quiz. Look for this quiz to come home every Friday with the spelling tests! There is also a website that the students can access from home:
https://www.sadlierconnect.com/vw
The website has interactive games like hangman, memory and more. Please ask your child to show you how to play hangman, as they loved doing it in class!

As always, please reach out should you have any questions or concerns! Thanks!