News From Kindergarten – Miss Cindy We will be celebrating Chinese New Year this week with a lot of different activities within the Literacy, Science, Math, Art and Social Studies kindergarten curriculums. On Monday, the children saw a Chinese Lion Dance in the afternoon and learned about the history and Traditions of Chinese New Year. Writing chinese numbers, creating New Year banners, using chopsticks, eating chinese sesame candy, creating masks and making tangram pictures are other activities students continue to work on. In writing, the words GO, LOOK and FOR were put on the high frequency word rings to use in daily writing. The non-fiction book, Seeds, is the literary focus this week. There is no school this Friday, since it is a Teacher Professional Development Day. News from Kindergarten - Teacher Dana We have been having a lot of fun this week learning about Chinese New Year this week. We learned that cleaning your house, wearing new clothes and getting hair cuts brings good luck in the new year. Today we made lucky Dragons, saw a Lion Dance, and read lots of stories about the lunar new year. It was a fun day! Norah is for the most part teaching solo now. I am in and out all day long checking on things, doing assessments, working with kids individually and doing small group instruction. It is going very well. Valentines day is coming up. We will exchange valentines on the 13th. I will send home a class list next week with first names. We will make bags on the day and have a friendship party at the end of the day and exchange the cards. I try to keep the sweets to a minimum so I would like to just have the party be an exchange. On that day we are also going to have a field trip to The Children’s Museum. We will return in time to exchange Valentines. Thank you for sending in your items to put in our mosaic mirror. We will be assembling it next Friday, so if you haven’t yet send in your item please do so. We are also asking each family for a 2.00 contribution to cover the cost of the materials. Please send that in an envelope marked with your child’s name. News from Kindergarten - Miss Sarah Gung Hey Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year! We have been learning a lot about this important Asian holiday and even got to see an incredible assembly featuring an amazing dragon and performance on Monday. We also learned about what we can do to Reuse! Reduce! and Recycle! and hopefully lesson our carbon footprint. A big thank you to Carolyn Sweet, Oona Baker, and Mark and Rebecca Perin for organizing our classroom art project for the auction! They are planning an incredible piece, which is sure to make a lasting treasure for some lucky bidder. We are asking each family to donate 3.00 to make this project happen. Please drop it off with me, or send in your child’s folder. Thanks! Speaking of the auction, I hope that you all will plan to attend. It is a great evening and lots of fun. Tickets are on sale in the office and will only be $20.00 for another week. I will be auctioning off some fun activities and woule love to see you there! Thank you for all your support. We are very lucky to now have 2 volunteers every day, but Tuesday, during our worktime centers. If any of you might be available for an hour, it makes a big difference in the level of work that is completed and allows me to meet with every child to focus on their reading skills. Sign-up is outside the door. Classroom Notes from First Grade - Mrs. Pechette Next Tuesday, February 3rd, our class will be having an Author’s Party. This will be a celebration to share their successfully published winter, friendship books. Please join us in the classroom at 2:15 for author readings and light refreshments. As we move into February we’ll continue to learn about our new president and presidential history. Many of the children are eager to read and learn about President Obama. Look in the hallway for the ideas that have been generated from the inaugural week. Classroom Notes from First Grade - Mrs. Logue On Monday we learned more about Asian Lunar New year and were honored to see a traditional Lion Dance Performance to usher in the New Year of the Ox. This week we will be learning about this big celebration which takes place in many Asian communities through books and poems, samples of traditional celebratory foods and by creating crafts that reflect the significance of this time of year for so many around the world and in our school as well! In literacy studies; I will also be introducing compound words and new little books to reading groups as well as new math work while refreshing the students understanding of numbers 1-100, counting by 10s and 5s, number games and problem solving. We will also be checking in on our quickly growing bulbs that we planted several weeks ago. The students are measuring and sketching the buds and finding all sorts of flora and fauna in the compost that Ms. Julia our Outdoor Center Mentor had us plan our bulbs in! Fun for all, especially with our new hand held micro scopes! Keep up the great work with the take home books. It makes all the difference! [email protected] Classroom Notes from Second Grade - Ms. Leake Gung Hay Fat Choy!! (Happy New Year) This is the last of our Celebrations of Light. This week we looked at the symbols for this lunar Festival. We learned about the traditions that happen during the 15 days of celebration. We read folk tales and informational stories about the Chinese culture. We enjoyed the Lion Dance performed by Lara and Wally’s Kung Fu Club. Back in the classroom, we made dragons and light up the night sky with our glittery fireworks. In Writing, we began our focus on ‘All Abouts’. We brainstormed a list of things we knew at least five facts about. In the coming lessons, we will learn how to make and label diagrams, write headings for our topic of interest, and put together a table of contents to organize our ideas. During independent writing times, we continue to write letters to friends and family and share our stories in the format of the personal narratives. Next week we return to our Weather unit when we learn about the Water Cycle and talk about different kinds of precipitation. Don’t forget to turn in your wind journals and wind chimes. Classroom Notes from Second Grade = Ms. Swan Ask your child about the incredible Lion Dance we saw today at an assembly in honor of Chinese New Year! Congratulations to our students who also performed in a piece: Aiden, Ashton, Elizabeth, Gabe and Niki. Another assembly brought home the important message of Reduce~Re- use~Recycle! Our class had many ideas of how we can all do our part. Because of their excellent assembly behavior, each student earned a certificate to be placed in the container for our Friday drawings. They each showed that they could behave responsibly, respectfully and safely during the assemblies. Huge thank you’s to the families of Aiden, Ashton, Gabe and Kellsy for each gifting us with a new book from the Book Fair that will be a sure-fire hit with our class! That is so very kind and generous of you. Tuesday marks our first day of Drama class with Ms. Tori. We have a Tuesday/Thursday group and a Wednesday/Friday group. Each session lasts an hour. At the end of their work, the class will put on a Reader’s Theatre for an audience. The scheduled date is February 26th. Portland Public Schools just delivered new handwriting materials. This last week, we have been working in the D’Nealian method, so that we have uniformity across the grades. For a capital “A,” you may hear your child saying, “Top start, slant left, same start, slant right, middle cross.” So far, this method has really improved handwriting on the worksheets. Now, we just need to have a strong carry over to our regular written work. =-) Chinese New Year Celebration... Classroom Notes from Ms. Ross Third Grade - Room 17 Congratulations to Ms. Tori Padelford and the third grade classes! The teachers and parents really enjoyed the Reader’s Theater performance. It was wonderful to see and hear the students rise to the occasion. The Scott Foresman Reading Assessments are completed, and Mrs. Jamesbarry, reading support teacher, and I are evaluating the results. The data is being used to refocus literacy instruction. Later in February the students will take the first of the Oregon State reading and math assessments. The students have the opportunity to retake the state tests three times if needed. In math, the students are now working on activities to help them understand probability. While we use language such as chance or likely, probability is the mathematical area of statistics which is based clearly on predictable numbers and outcomes. Most of the students will be finished with their character analysis papers this week. Parents can help students become better writers by encouraging neat handwriting, proper spelling, and correct punctuation. We were sad to say good-bye to Joseph Campbell. We wished him the best of luck with his next class, and we thanked him for all of his hard work and support with our third grade class. NEWS FROM MS. DAVIS’ AND MS. V’S CLASS, RM 16 Gung Hay Fat Choy! We started the week off by celebrating the Chinese New Year with a spectacular Lion Dance done by the Kung Fu Academy. The Lion Dance is a 2000 year-old tradition that is most often preformed during the Chinese Lunar New Year. The children that participate in Kung Fu Club did a short on stage performance of some Kung Fu moves at the end of the Lion Dance. I always enjoying having an opportunity to see Meriwether Lewis Elementary School Classroom Notes 503 916 6360 - http://lewiselementary.org/notes January 28, 2009