Happy Thanksgiving!
I hope you are enjoying yourself and enjoying time with your family. Just wanted to remind you and your child that they should spend some of their time off from school reading. I love losing myself in my book and am looking forward to having some extra time to read this holiday. Be sure to record reading on your reading log.
We are working hard to gain more points as we play math games on www.firstinmath! Your child will have fun exploring this site and discovering math strategy games, and problem solving, as well as fact practice. If your child forgets his/her user name or password, email me and I will email the info to you.
A review packet for social studies came home on Monday. Please review this information with your child. We will be having a benchmark on this information on Wednesday, November 30. We will also have a science benchmark on Tuesday, November 29.
Here are some fun Thanksgiving websites to explore, if your child gets bored.
http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/daily_life/index.htm
http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/webcast.htm#
Have a fun and safe holiday! I am very thankful that I get to spend time with your child each day!
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Newsletter-Awesome Visit with Pen Pals
Hi,
Your children did an amazing job interacting with our pen pals this afternoon! They interviewed them about their Thanksgiving tradtions and performed two Thanksgiving Reader's Theaters (using a microphone! Very exciting!) They also played games and worked on some fun Thanksgiving puzzles. In the morning we decorated framed photos of ourselves as a gift for our pen pals and revised and edtited our Thanksgiving poems. We wrote them on pretty fall paper and gave them to our pen pals also. It was a great afternoon. Our next visit will be on Friday, December 9 at 9:00 am. We would love to have you join us and meet our wonderful pen pals.
Our published class books are in! We were going to share them today but ran out of time. We will read them together on Monday and if you purchased a copy, it will come home. Today your child should have brought home a stapled packet that included an online order form if you would like to purchase a class book.
Your child also brought home a letter explaining the website www.firstinmath.com. Our school is using this fun site as a way to help us practice math facts and concepts in a game format. As you play, you receive points and stickers for yourself and for our class. It gets harder as you progress through the games and there are many, many games. I was experimenting with it at home and it is very addicting! Each student has their own username and password. If they lost the little piece of paper, email me and I will get it to you. I encourage you to go on this site with your child, bookmark it, and have them play for a little while each day. I think that we will see huge improvements quickly!
Here's what we did this week:
Reading: We read some expository text in magazines and wrote on post-its as we read. On the post-its we wrote facts that we found interesting and/or important that we wanted to teach our partner. We then met with our partner and shared articles. It helped us realize that the main ideas in the article (most important parts) and that helps the us teach our partner what the article is about but the details (the interesting parts) support the main idea and helps us to make connections and encourages us to keep reading. We will continue to read non-fiction or expository text throughout the year. Book Clubs are overall going well. Most of your children have finished at least one novel and some are on their third or fourth novel! I am so glad that they are reading and finishing books but am mostly glad that they can talk about the characters and how they have changed, they can make predictions and support those predictions with evidence from the book, they are asking thoughtful questions, and discussing the novels together in deeper ways.
Writing: We used our science writing topic of forms of energy to model essay writing. Then started planning and drafting an essay about a role model. We will continue revising and editing that essay. We also took our first benchmark on essay or expository writing. They are off to a great start! We read a fun book called Turkey Bowl by Phil Bildner and noticed all the great adjectives and nouns that he used then tried to incorporate strong word choice into our Thanksgiving poems.
Math: Multiplication strategies were fun this week. We played games and looked for patterns for 9's and 6's. (5X10)-5=45 9x5=45, (7x10)-7=63 9x7=63, (9x10)-9=81 9x9=81, (5x5)+5=30 6x5=30, (7x5)+7=42 6x7=42, (4x5)+4=24 6x4=24 We also worked hard on strategies for elapsed time and multistep problems using multiplication. We will be starting some division work next week.
Science: Electricity was cool! We experimented with circuits and electromagnets. Some of them worked fine, others were a little more challenging. We also worked on a web quest activity and took a science vocabulary test. A study guide for our test on Energy came home today in that stapled packet. We will be having that test on Tuesday, November 29.
Social Studies: We will be learning about missions and early colonies next.
Dates to Remember:
Tuesday, November 22-Red Dragon Pillow Drive, Service Club 2:45pm-4:00pm
Wednesday, November 23-Friday, November 25-Thanksgiving Holiday
Monday, November 28-Running Club
Tuesday, November 29-Science test, Math Club 2:45-3:45pm
Thursday, December 1-Writing Club 2:45-4:00pm
Saturday, December 3-Volunteer at RR Serving Center from 10am-11am
Sunday, December 4-Drop off fleece blankets& holiday party at Emergency Shelter 2:00-3:00 pm
Monday, December 5-TAG referral packets due to office, Running Club
Tuesday, December 6-Senior Coyote Choir Tour, Service Club 2:45-4:00pm
Wednesday, December 7-Early Release Day
Have a great weekend! Please contact me with any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Your children did an amazing job interacting with our pen pals this afternoon! They interviewed them about their Thanksgiving tradtions and performed two Thanksgiving Reader's Theaters (using a microphone! Very exciting!) They also played games and worked on some fun Thanksgiving puzzles. In the morning we decorated framed photos of ourselves as a gift for our pen pals and revised and edtited our Thanksgiving poems. We wrote them on pretty fall paper and gave them to our pen pals also. It was a great afternoon. Our next visit will be on Friday, December 9 at 9:00 am. We would love to have you join us and meet our wonderful pen pals.
Our published class books are in! We were going to share them today but ran out of time. We will read them together on Monday and if you purchased a copy, it will come home. Today your child should have brought home a stapled packet that included an online order form if you would like to purchase a class book.
Your child also brought home a letter explaining the website www.firstinmath.com. Our school is using this fun site as a way to help us practice math facts and concepts in a game format. As you play, you receive points and stickers for yourself and for our class. It gets harder as you progress through the games and there are many, many games. I was experimenting with it at home and it is very addicting! Each student has their own username and password. If they lost the little piece of paper, email me and I will get it to you. I encourage you to go on this site with your child, bookmark it, and have them play for a little while each day. I think that we will see huge improvements quickly!
Here's what we did this week:
Reading: We read some expository text in magazines and wrote on post-its as we read. On the post-its we wrote facts that we found interesting and/or important that we wanted to teach our partner. We then met with our partner and shared articles. It helped us realize that the main ideas in the article (most important parts) and that helps the us teach our partner what the article is about but the details (the interesting parts) support the main idea and helps us to make connections and encourages us to keep reading. We will continue to read non-fiction or expository text throughout the year. Book Clubs are overall going well. Most of your children have finished at least one novel and some are on their third or fourth novel! I am so glad that they are reading and finishing books but am mostly glad that they can talk about the characters and how they have changed, they can make predictions and support those predictions with evidence from the book, they are asking thoughtful questions, and discussing the novels together in deeper ways.
Writing: We used our science writing topic of forms of energy to model essay writing. Then started planning and drafting an essay about a role model. We will continue revising and editing that essay. We also took our first benchmark on essay or expository writing. They are off to a great start! We read a fun book called Turkey Bowl by Phil Bildner and noticed all the great adjectives and nouns that he used then tried to incorporate strong word choice into our Thanksgiving poems.
Math: Multiplication strategies were fun this week. We played games and looked for patterns for 9's and 6's. (5X10)-5=45 9x5=45, (7x10)-7=63 9x7=63, (9x10)-9=81 9x9=81, (5x5)+5=30 6x5=30, (7x5)+7=42 6x7=42, (4x5)+4=24 6x4=24 We also worked hard on strategies for elapsed time and multistep problems using multiplication. We will be starting some division work next week.
Science: Electricity was cool! We experimented with circuits and electromagnets. Some of them worked fine, others were a little more challenging. We also worked on a web quest activity and took a science vocabulary test. A study guide for our test on Energy came home today in that stapled packet. We will be having that test on Tuesday, November 29.
Social Studies: We will be learning about missions and early colonies next.
Dates to Remember:
Tuesday, November 22-Red Dragon Pillow Drive, Service Club 2:45pm-4:00pm
Wednesday, November 23-Friday, November 25-Thanksgiving Holiday
Monday, November 28-Running Club
Tuesday, November 29-Science test, Math Club 2:45-3:45pm
Thursday, December 1-Writing Club 2:45-4:00pm
Saturday, December 3-Volunteer at RR Serving Center from 10am-11am
Sunday, December 4-Drop off fleece blankets& holiday party at Emergency Shelter 2:00-3:00 pm
Monday, December 5-TAG referral packets due to office, Running Club
Tuesday, December 6-Senior Coyote Choir Tour, Service Club 2:45-4:00pm
Wednesday, December 7-Early Release Day
Have a great weekend! Please contact me with any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Monday, November 14, 2011
Newsletter-Pen Pals Visit on Friday at 1:45 in the library. Yeah!!!!
Hi,
I had family in town last week (8 family members including our niece's one year old little girl!) so stayed home on Thursday and Friday to spend time with them. I had a great time but am happy to be back with your children.
This Friday, November 18, our pen pals are coming to visit! We will be meeting in the library at 1:45 (right after our specials) and stay there until dismissal. We will be performing some Thanksgiving Reader's Theaters (scripts will some home tomorrow), interviewing our pen pals about their Thanksgiving traditions, and writing poems about things for which we are thankful. We will play some games, if we have time. We are excited about seeing them again. Feel free to join us for our visit!
Last Friday, the kids enjoyed a concert from the Austin Jazz Workshop. I heard that it was a great show.
This Tuesday will be the second meeting of the FCE Math Club! The children (kdg-5th grade) explore math problem solving games. At their last meeting, they were using strategies and building things like the game, Mouse Trap. Most of your children love a challenge and love to solve puzzles. Come and check out math club! They meet from 2:45-3:45 in Mrs. Washburn's portable. Hope to see lots of our fabulous mathematicians there!
This Thursday will be the second meeting of our Writing Club! Encourage your child to stay and write with us. The writing club is a place to write and share writing. Mrs.Peterson and I conference with the children about their writing and help to revise and publish some pieces. The children (2nd grade-5th grade) are encouraged to experiment with writing in different forms and write for the love of writing! We will be meeting in the library from 2:45-4:00 every other Thursday. Pick up in the front of the school. Hope to see lots of our awesome writers there!
Reading and Social Studies-We have been working on projects about our Texas explorers and integrating some reading lessons as well. We also are reading and talking about the characters and how they change in our book club books.
Writing-We are writing essays and expository writing. We planned a piece using a graphic organizer on one of the explorers. We also wrote about sound energy, mechanical energy, and heat energy are all created when playing a musical instrument like a guitar. Role Models are the topic for our current essays. We planned these essays and began our first drafts. We will be revising and editing these pieces and then writing our final copies. We will continue working on essays as well as some more personal narratives.
Math-Multiplication is very fun! We are discovering and sharing new strategies, playing games to practice facts, and multiplying larger numbers. We are also problem solving and sharing strategies using multiplication.
Science-We examined several everyday objects and decided which form or forms of energy were used. We will be experimenting some more with these items this week and taking a vocabulary test on Thursday. Don't forget to go to Stemscopes for extra practice. (go to our school website, for teachers, Stemscopes, user name-Bartholomew, password-bats) Do the activities in the buckets for Forms of Energy and Conductors, Insulators, and Electricity.
Dates to remember:
Red Dragon Pillow Drive continues
Tuesday-Math Club-Mrs. Washburn's portable 2:45-3:45
6:00 pm-Reflections Gallery Night
TAG referral packets available for print-out from District Website-TAG department
Wednesday-Picture Retakes
Thursday-Writing Club-Library-2:45-3:45
Thanksgiving Meal at regular lunchtimes
Friday-PTA Movie Night Under the Stars-7:00pm
Wednesday, November 23-Friday, November 25-No school, Thanksgiving Holiday
Have a great week! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
I had family in town last week (8 family members including our niece's one year old little girl!) so stayed home on Thursday and Friday to spend time with them. I had a great time but am happy to be back with your children.
This Friday, November 18, our pen pals are coming to visit! We will be meeting in the library at 1:45 (right after our specials) and stay there until dismissal. We will be performing some Thanksgiving Reader's Theaters (scripts will some home tomorrow), interviewing our pen pals about their Thanksgiving traditions, and writing poems about things for which we are thankful. We will play some games, if we have time. We are excited about seeing them again. Feel free to join us for our visit!
Last Friday, the kids enjoyed a concert from the Austin Jazz Workshop. I heard that it was a great show.
This Tuesday will be the second meeting of the FCE Math Club! The children (kdg-5th grade) explore math problem solving games. At their last meeting, they were using strategies and building things like the game, Mouse Trap. Most of your children love a challenge and love to solve puzzles. Come and check out math club! They meet from 2:45-3:45 in Mrs. Washburn's portable. Hope to see lots of our fabulous mathematicians there!
This Thursday will be the second meeting of our Writing Club! Encourage your child to stay and write with us. The writing club is a place to write and share writing. Mrs.Peterson and I conference with the children about their writing and help to revise and publish some pieces. The children (2nd grade-5th grade) are encouraged to experiment with writing in different forms and write for the love of writing! We will be meeting in the library from 2:45-4:00 every other Thursday. Pick up in the front of the school. Hope to see lots of our awesome writers there!
Reading and Social Studies-We have been working on projects about our Texas explorers and integrating some reading lessons as well. We also are reading and talking about the characters and how they change in our book club books.
Writing-We are writing essays and expository writing. We planned a piece using a graphic organizer on one of the explorers. We also wrote about sound energy, mechanical energy, and heat energy are all created when playing a musical instrument like a guitar. Role Models are the topic for our current essays. We planned these essays and began our first drafts. We will be revising and editing these pieces and then writing our final copies. We will continue working on essays as well as some more personal narratives.
Math-Multiplication is very fun! We are discovering and sharing new strategies, playing games to practice facts, and multiplying larger numbers. We are also problem solving and sharing strategies using multiplication.
Science-We examined several everyday objects and decided which form or forms of energy were used. We will be experimenting some more with these items this week and taking a vocabulary test on Thursday. Don't forget to go to Stemscopes for extra practice. (go to our school website, for teachers, Stemscopes, user name-Bartholomew, password-bats) Do the activities in the buckets for Forms of Energy and Conductors, Insulators, and Electricity.
Dates to remember:
Red Dragon Pillow Drive continues
Tuesday-Math Club-Mrs. Washburn's portable 2:45-3:45
6:00 pm-Reflections Gallery Night
TAG referral packets available for print-out from District Website-TAG department
Wednesday-Picture Retakes
Thursday-Writing Club-Library-2:45-3:45
Thanksgiving Meal at regular lunchtimes
Friday-PTA Movie Night Under the Stars-7:00pm
Wednesday, November 23-Friday, November 25-No school, Thanksgiving Holiday
Have a great week! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Friday, November 4, 2011
Newsletter
Hi,
We had a great Halloween week! We tried to incorporate some Halloween fun into our math and reading activities on Monday. We read Big Pumpkin and made a story mountain to review the elements of fiction. We solved a logic problem based on costumes and trick or treating. We dramatically read aloud a poem called In a Dark Dark Wood. We had a fun day!
Saturday morning the Service Club (and any FCE families who want to join us) will be volunteering at the Round Rock Serving Center from 10 am - 11 am. We will be stocking shelves, organizing donations, etc... We will be there every first Saturday of the month. Be sure to come and help!
Our class book is in the mail ready for publication! We worked hard to complete our class poetry book with illustrations. I think that it turned out great and I can't wait to see the final product. Thank you for returning your order forms. We will have a celebration when the books arrive!
Reading/Social Studies-We are integrating some SS work with explorers into our reading. We practice making inferencing by using our background knowledge and clues from the text. We did that by reading an amazing book called Encounter by Jane Yolen. It is about Columbus landing in San Salvador but told from a native boy's point of view. I read the book to them without letting them see the illustrations so that they could make inferences based on the words and their own background knowledge. We practiced reading from the textbook and using text features. We took notes as we read then used those notes and some short biographies to match explorers in Texas with where they explored and some facts about them. We also made a human timeline using events about the explorers. We will be working on projects with explorers next week and using magazines to read expository text.
Writing-Essays are our genre at this time. They are doing a great job noticing and observing and then writing about their big ideas. (This makes me realize... this makes me think...., this makes me wonder.....) We compared narrative writing and essays to help us be able to organize text when we write and to know what to expect when we read. Next week we will be using big ideas or central ideas and writing examples to support those big ideas to create essays.
Math-Elapsed time can be tricky. We have been practicing it a lot this week using small clocks as well as time number lines. (make a horizontal line, write the starting time, make jumps counting by hours or minutes until you reach your ending time) We will continue to work on this. Problem solving with patterns, input/output charts, and algebraic equations continues to be fun and challenging. We also have been working with number tricks and practicing math vocabulary like-sum, difference, product, and quotient. We are starting to work on multiplication with larger numbers and today used partial products to help solve multiplication facts. We drew arrays and then broke the arrays into smaller arrays. After multiplying the smaller arrays we added those products together to get the answer for the large array. It sounds confusing but is quite useful and efficient once they get the hang of it! More of that is coming next week.
We will be working with energy next week in science.
Don't forget to bring in pillows for the Pillow Drive for soldiers returning to Fort Hood.
Dates to Remember:
Monday, November 7-Running Club
Tuesday, November 8-Service Club 2:45-4:00 pm, TAG Informational Meeting at 5:00 pm,
PTA Meeting and Senior Coyote Choir Concert at 6:30pm
Wednesday, November 9-Senior Choir Concert at 8:30am
Friday, November 11-Veteran's Day-Come eat breakfast with your child
Monday, November 14-Running Club
Tuesday, November 15-Math Club-2:45-3:45pm
Thursday, November 17-Thanksgiving Meal at lunch 11:55, Writing Club-2:45-4:00pm
Wednesday, November 23-Friday, November 25-Thanksgiving Holiday
Have a wonderful weekend! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
We had a great Halloween week! We tried to incorporate some Halloween fun into our math and reading activities on Monday. We read Big Pumpkin and made a story mountain to review the elements of fiction. We solved a logic problem based on costumes and trick or treating. We dramatically read aloud a poem called In a Dark Dark Wood. We had a fun day!
Saturday morning the Service Club (and any FCE families who want to join us) will be volunteering at the Round Rock Serving Center from 10 am - 11 am. We will be stocking shelves, organizing donations, etc... We will be there every first Saturday of the month. Be sure to come and help!
Our class book is in the mail ready for publication! We worked hard to complete our class poetry book with illustrations. I think that it turned out great and I can't wait to see the final product. Thank you for returning your order forms. We will have a celebration when the books arrive!
Reading/Social Studies-We are integrating some SS work with explorers into our reading. We practice making inferencing by using our background knowledge and clues from the text. We did that by reading an amazing book called Encounter by Jane Yolen. It is about Columbus landing in San Salvador but told from a native boy's point of view. I read the book to them without letting them see the illustrations so that they could make inferences based on the words and their own background knowledge. We practiced reading from the textbook and using text features. We took notes as we read then used those notes and some short biographies to match explorers in Texas with where they explored and some facts about them. We also made a human timeline using events about the explorers. We will be working on projects with explorers next week and using magazines to read expository text.
Writing-Essays are our genre at this time. They are doing a great job noticing and observing and then writing about their big ideas. (This makes me realize... this makes me think...., this makes me wonder.....) We compared narrative writing and essays to help us be able to organize text when we write and to know what to expect when we read. Next week we will be using big ideas or central ideas and writing examples to support those big ideas to create essays.
Math-Elapsed time can be tricky. We have been practicing it a lot this week using small clocks as well as time number lines. (make a horizontal line, write the starting time, make jumps counting by hours or minutes until you reach your ending time) We will continue to work on this. Problem solving with patterns, input/output charts, and algebraic equations continues to be fun and challenging. We also have been working with number tricks and practicing math vocabulary like-sum, difference, product, and quotient. We are starting to work on multiplication with larger numbers and today used partial products to help solve multiplication facts. We drew arrays and then broke the arrays into smaller arrays. After multiplying the smaller arrays we added those products together to get the answer for the large array. It sounds confusing but is quite useful and efficient once they get the hang of it! More of that is coming next week.
We will be working with energy next week in science.
Don't forget to bring in pillows for the Pillow Drive for soldiers returning to Fort Hood.
Dates to Remember:
Monday, November 7-Running Club
Tuesday, November 8-Service Club 2:45-4:00 pm, TAG Informational Meeting at 5:00 pm,
PTA Meeting and Senior Coyote Choir Concert at 6:30pm
Wednesday, November 9-Senior Choir Concert at 8:30am
Friday, November 11-Veteran's Day-Come eat breakfast with your child
Monday, November 14-Running Club
Tuesday, November 15-Math Club-2:45-3:45pm
Thursday, November 17-Thanksgiving Meal at lunch 11:55, Writing Club-2:45-4:00pm
Wednesday, November 23-Friday, November 25-Thanksgiving Holiday
Have a wonderful weekend! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
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