We met Jamie Swan, or Mrs. Swan today. She was very nice and the students really liked her. Thank you, Mrs. Morledge-Hampton, for coming in today to help with centers. What a cold day! We were lucky enough to enjoy morning recess, but we stayed inside for afternoon recess. Since it was too wet to go out, students had "free choice" centers, including Legos, puzzles, and any of the regular literacy and math centers.

We have been reading The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything. Students read all of the actions from the story. "Two shoes go CLOMP, CLOPM, one pair of pants go WIGGLE, WIGGLE, one shirt goes SHAKE, SHAKE, two gloves go CLAP, CLAP, one hat goes NOD, NOD, and one giant, scary pumpkin head goes, BOO, BOO" (to scare the crows away). Students wrote some of the action words by sounding them out. We'll do this often, as this is how students learn to write and writing leads to reading. At home, you can ask your child to sound out words, one sound at a time. Start with words whose letters make the expected sound. For example, don't start with giraffe, since the g is making a j sound and not the g sound. If they use they leave out silent letters, there's no need to correct them. PRAISE, PRAISE, PRAISE. Relax...the spelling will come later. If they spell rainbow as ranbo, that's fantastic because look at how many sounds they heard!!!

We're working on patterns in math. We've mostly studied visual patterns, but at home, point out patterns that you can think of, including sounds in music, days of the week, etc. We look at what changes. For example, a pattern of all red buttons in different shapes is a "shape pattern" because the shape is the only thing that changed.

Wow! I made two huge mistakes that I must apologize for. First, the date on the field trip form was incorrect. We are actually going on Wednesday, October 7th not on the 6th. Second, I forgot to add the reading log to the bottom of the newsletter. Please simply send a slip of paper with the total number of minutes your child read to you (or you read to them) and return it inside of the Monday envelope next Tuesday. Sorry for the confusion!!!

Welcome back, Gabriel! We had a great day. I, especially, had a great day, with some wonderful teaching moments. We read the book The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything. Students were able to make a text to text connection, relating the character in this book to characters in two other books. Wow! One of the books they found to be similar was We're Going on a Bear Hunt. (You've probably listened to several verses of this tonight. :)

Reading about a character who is not afraid of things led into our writing project for the week. Today, students created a writing prompt sheet by folding a paper into fourths. In each section, they drew something that they are afraid of. Since we're focusing on scarecrows, we want to put the focus on crows or other animals being scared -- not us! We're not afraid of anything! Our story will be about how brave we are.

Hopefully, your child showed you the turtle they made for letter T day. I can tell that some of you really focus on letter recognition at home as the kids are quick to tell me that they have seen this letter in someones name. I'm glad they are noticing such things!

Please remind your child to cough or sneeze into the bend of their elbow and NOT on their hands. We don't want germs spread to everything we touch. Wash or sanitize frequently!

Picture day went very smoothly, but I was sad that two students were absent. Thankfully, the photographers and their helpers came to get us right at 8:30, while we were still clean! In science today, we studied how things move on an incline. I had a piece of dry wall board and some Hot Wheels cars and Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Students made predictions about which would get to the bottom first and explained their reasoning. We tested our theories and discussed what happened. We talked about the weather changes that Fall will bring (I wish it would hurry and happen) and made our calendar reflect the current season.

Today was American Indian Heritage Day. I planned a lesson that required going onto the Montana Office of Public Instruction web site to view a portion of a video titled Long Ago in Montana. It addressed how Native Americans got the things they needed before money was invented. However, the school district server was down most of the day, so we only had a book to read about a chicken who wanted a scarecrow's hat for her nest. The scarecrow wanted a walking stick. The chicken made a number of exchanges to eventually get the walking stick for scarecrow and was able to exchange for the hat. It was a cute story that had several wonderful vocabulary words, including "delighted." Each student was supposed to come home and tell you something that delighted them. I'm curious to see who remembered.

Starting next Wednesday, a college student who studying to become a teacher will be in our room each Wednesday and Friday for the next six weeks. Her name is Jamie Swan. She will most likely spend the first day or two observing, but she and I will be planning some lessons that she will be teaching. I look forward to meeting her.

Thanks for being so prompt today in picking up your child from school! Things went very smoothly on our first early out. Thank you, too, for your response to my request for helpers on our field trip. Three parents have volunteered their time to accompany us, which should be enough to keep everyone safe.

Hopefully you have had a chance to look through your child's backpack tonight. Book orders arrived and if you ordered books they were sent home today. Thank you for your orders--they help me earn points for more classroom books.

Today students painted rainbows for letter R day. They also wrote lowercase Rs and colored pictures of some objects that begin with R. We have been choral reading a letter book each day. I read the line by myself the first time, and the students read it the second time. During both readings, I point to the words as we say them. This helps to teach directionality (reading from left to right), recognition of sight words (at least one sight word is repeated on each page). Here's an example of today's book: "Here is the ring." "Here is the rainbow." "Here is the raccoon." In this example, students would be seeing/saying three words over and over again: here, is, and the. You'll be amazed at how quickly they learn to recognize those words when they see them in other places. Try pointing out "the end" in your child's bedtime story tonight and see if they can read it to you. Chances are they can! Give tons of praise for how incredibly smart they are!

Welcome back, Aspen!! Thanks to Anna and Gail Bergstedt for presenting information about China and adoption to our class this morning. Suddenly, everyone wants to visit China! I haven't received any picture order forms yet. I am aware that there is now an option to order and pay for your pictures online. In the past, teachers kept track of everyone's money until the actual time of our photo session, then we'd put the check into each child's hand to give to the photographer. I'm not sure how the change will affect picture day.

We read a fun book today called Q is for Duck. Students had to use their brains to determine why each letter was associated with something seemingly obscure. For example, B is for dog because dogs bark and X is for dinosaur because they are extinct. Students worked on their Who Am I? books by coloring their hair and eyes and writing the appropriate color word on the page. The word "blonde" was not well understood and it caused even more confusion when there was not a Crayon to match.

In math, students drew a picture of the way they get to school (walk, bicycle, scooter, car). We put the pictures onto a graph. I can't remember for sure, but I think walk had the most, scooter had the least, and car and bike were tied. For literacy, students listened for how many times the word "the" was used per page of one of our books. Next, they used highlighter tape to highlight the word. "The" and "end" are new words on our word wall, so we will practice spelling them and finding them in books. For writer's workshop, students designed their own quilt and wrote the (very short) sentence, "The quilt."

I learned today that I will need to get permission slips signed in order to take students on our walking field trip to the fire station, so I will send that in next Monday's envelope. If you would please sign it and return it the next day, I'd appreciate it.

Early out at noon tomorrow. Please try to be on time because the teachers have to leave fairly quickly to get to our training. Thanks!

We made pretty peacocks for our letter P day. We also played a game in which students popped up like popcorn when they heard a letter in their name. Students underlined Ps in a poem called Popcorn. For writer's workshop, students drew pictures of at least 3 things that begin with P and copied the words off the board.

Students checked out library books today. At story time, I read The Day the Teacher Went Bananas about a mix-up in which a substitute teacher is sent to the zoo and a gorilla is sent to a school. In math, students made a real graph by standing in columns. Today, we had more boys than girls. We also compared sets of objects. Students drew lines from each object in one set to an object in another set to see which had more objects.

I went to a training tonight to learn about a piece of equipment that turns an ordinary whiteboard into a Smart board. I am excited about trying it at school soon.