Happy 2013!

We're back!  I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing winter break.  Mine was a little busy, but great!

Here's some classroom updates as we start off 2013....

We just started a new unit in Math about comparing and ordering numbers up to 100.  We will be covering greater than and less than, putting three numbers in order and making an organized list with numbers.  I want to keep encouraging you all to continue practicing addition and subtraction math facts with your children so they can continue to show progress on their mad minutes.  Thanks for all your hard work in this so far!  Their progress is outstanding and I would love for that to continue!

In Reading, we are reading a biography about Tomas Rivera who was a teacher and a writer.  We will focus on characters as well as summarizing the story.  We are also learning about special names and titles for people (i.e. Ms. Petrucci, Tomas Rivera, etc.)  We will focus on making sure that each of the special names or titles begins with a capital letter.

In Spelling, we are working on words with the diagraphs "qu" and "wh".  The "wh" words can be tricky because the sound is similar to the "w" sound.  For the "qu" words, I tell the students that "q" and "u" are "married" so they are pretty much always together when we spell words with the "q" sound.

We are taking a break from Science, Social Studies and Health this week and working on some winter projects and writing.  The students will be writing some acrostic poetry, how to build a snowman, and writing a creative story about their own snowglobe.  The students are becoming very skilled and creative writers!  The ideas they come up with are so amazing!  I'm very proud of how far they've come from writing one sentence at the beginning of the year.  Now, they can write at least 5 or 6!

There are a bunch of different reading incentives coming home with your child this month.  The great thing about this is that you can use the same books for all three programs.  One is our classroom incentive program.  This month is "Warming Up to a Good Book".  The students each have a mug in the classroom and the goal is to fill it up with 10 marshmallows.  The two school wide programs are the Six Flags Reading Program and Ozzie's Reading Club.  More information about Ozzie will come out later this week.  The Six Flags program is great because the students only need to read for 6 hours and they will receive a free ticket to Six Flags!  That is an awesome reward!  The Ozzie Reading Club is similar, but the students will receive a free ticket to a Kane County Cougars game.  I believe the game we are attending is where the Franzen Chorus will be singing the National Anthem!  So, we have lots of incentives for reading this winter!

I hope you all are enjoying the new year!