The Bond Brief
Friday, September 13, 2013
An Exciting Second Week!
What an interesting end to Week 2! Thank-you to all the parents that attended Curriculum Night in the dark! It was an interesting night. Because of the power outage, my original plans had to go out the door, so if I skipped over anything or if you have any more questions, please let me know. I have created a few screencasts (videos) of some of the things I wanted to show you. I have attached these to the newsletter. In addition, I have also attached the link to our Volunteer Sign-up Genius and our Fall Conference Sign-Up Genius.
Students have been introduced to 2 technology tools this week. Edmodo was introduced in computer lab on Wednesday, and I have created a short video to explain it that is linked below. Today I introduced Class Dojo, an online behavior management tool. The kids were super excited to choose an avatar. Your child will have a secret code that is coming home tonight. This will allow your child to go on and register. He/she will also be able to customize an avatar. In class we discussed positive and negative behaviors to keep track of. We will begin this next week. The Dojo Points will not reflect behavior for the entire day, as we will choose certain periods to open the Dojo up. I expect that we will focus on one subject a week for now. If you have any questions, please let me know.
The Week In Review
Math: The focus of Unit 2 is Addition and Subtraction. This week focused on the following learning targets: I can use fact families to show the relationship between addition and subtraction, I can use strategies to solve addition and subtraction equations, and I can use addition strategies to solve number stories. Next week we will continue to learn about strategies to solve number stories in both addition and subtraction. Please continue to work on addition fact mastery. We will have timed tests each Tuesday and Thursday.
Science: We have started our unit on water. The children have explored how water reacts on a variety of surfaces, as well as surface tension.
Reading: The monkeys are being well fed in Team Bond, which means students are doing a lot of great reading at home. Keep up the great work! In reading workshop, we practiced the Fab Five response, which students write 5 fabulous sentences about the book they were reading. In addition, we are focusing on wonderful words in our read aloud, The Secret Zoo.
Writing: We have continued to write in our Idea Notebook. On Wednesday, the children wrote about words associated with Patriot's Day. Today we kicked off the Sunshine Club, which allows us to write letters and cards to people that need a bit of sunshine in thier life. Our first person is my father-in-law who has cancer in his femur. He cannot get chemo, so they are amputating his leg next week in Houston. I thought it would be nice to send a lot of sunshine his way! If you have anyone in need of sunshine, either for health reasons or even people that may live alone, please send in their address and name, and we can add them to our address book.
International Dot Day
We will be celebrating Dot Day on Monday! It is a day based on the book, The Dot by Peter Reynolds. (http://www.thedotclub.org/dotday/get-started) It is a day about creativity and self-expression. Students will be able to enjoy the book, discussions about being yourself and being unique, and be able to create their very own dot to display and share. We will be connecting with my son's class in Brighton at the end of the day to share dot creations. In addition, the children will be exposed to Augmented Reality, as there is an app called ColAR that will allow their dots to come to life and be 3-D through the iPad! It is sure to be a cool experience for all! If your child would like to wear dots, that would be great! I am planning on wearing my polka-dot dress in honor of the celebration!