The Fontaine Flier
September 12, 2015
Freedom Week-September 14-18
Noah's Bandage Drive All this Week!
Mid-Term Reports Were Sent Home on Friday
Mid-term reports were put in mailboxes on Friday. If your child's did not make it home, grades are also posted on ParentVue. This part of the year is the most challenging for students and it is not uncommon for you to see some low scores. This is when I set my expectations and students are trying to figure those out as well. I grade fairly hard so students will push themselves to get where I want them to be. I have already seen an AMAZING improvement in their writing of constructed responses. The first week they were giving me one, very basic sentence, now I'm getting a page that cites evidence from the text.. Students are always allowed to go back and fix their assignments for a better grade. They are also allowed to retake tests and I will average the two scores.
If you have any questions, please let me know. I promise you that I will never let a child fail. Most low grades are due to missing work which I have also seen big improvements on.
Thank you for helping out with the Writer's Notebooks!
Spelling Reminder
Spelling practice pages and the new list will be sent home on Fridays. There will be time during Daily 3/Guided Reading time for students to work on their spelling. I suggest they keep it in their take home folder so they can either work on it at home or pull it out here at school. Several students are still not turning in those practice pages on Thursday. This is an easy way to keep that spelling grade up. Post tests are always on Thursday and pretests are on Friday.
Spelling City- www.spellingcity.com/khitchcockbb
Important Dates to Remember
Wednesday, September 14-Book Orders Due
Friday, September 25-Professional Development Day-No School for Students
Creativity!
How will I ever make it home?
Decorating our Writer's Notebooks
WOW Word-Curmudgeon (a bad-tempered or grumpy person)
Artists at Work!
Complete concentration.
Look at those masterpieces!
Math Wings Fliers Going Home this Week
Coming Up This Week...
Social Studies-Freedom Week/Native Americans-Plains & Pacific Northwest
Math-Students will be starting Topic 3- Mrs. Hitchcock was so impressed with the Topic 2 test scores!
Reading-We are finally ready to start A Package for Mrs. Jewels in our Journeys books. This first story is a difficult one and the test can be challenging for some. Right of the bat they throw irony at them and omniscient point of view. We will really be focusing on "Getting the Gist". This means that the student can grasp the basic meaning of the story.
Skill and Strategy Focus
Genre-Humor
Story-A Package for Mrs. Jewels.
Target Skills- point of view, irony, summarizing, context clues, and story structure, getting the gist.
The assessment over this story may be on Friday if we are ready.
Vocabulary-
disturbing
interrupted
squashing
specialty
struggled
staggered
wobbled
collapsed
numb
shifted
Writing-Last week we took a few days to work on transition words (Using words such as suddenly, first, finally, etc.). This helps our writing connect and flow for our readers.
We are now ready to move onto our point of view fairy tales.
Star of the Week
Every week we will be having a "Star of the Week". During this special week, one student will get to do something special each day (at the end of the day). On the Friday before, your child will bring home a note (I will also e-mail you with a heads up.) explaining the details and a poster for them to fill up and decorate. Here is the 411 on Star of the Week...
Monday-Share 6-8 pictures of family, friends, pets, etc. (you can even e-mail them to me)
Tuesday-Share their poster
Wednesday-Hot Seat (Classmates get to ask "Getting to know you" types of questions.
Thursday-Compliment book-Classmates will make a compliment book for your child to take home.
If there is something special or someone special that your child would like to share that week, just let me know and we can set something up. :)