Parent Assignment #2

The Memorable Moment

Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be working on the genre of personal narratives.

Your Task:

With input from your child, over the course of the next few days, construct a list of memorable events. These individual events should be about moments which occurred across a time span of approximately 20 minutes maximum in length. Each event should have an identifiable emotion (or two) attached to it (fear, happiness, surprise).


Examples of events which will not work:
My Day at Disneyland
Christmas Morning
My Birthday Party
The Winning Game

Examples of events which will work:
Meeting Cinderella
Opening My Favorite Gift
Breaking the Pinata at My Party
Scoring the Winning Goal

Try to make a list of at least 10 memorable moments. Make a copy of the list for you to keep at home. Send one copy of the list to school with your child by Wednesday, September 4th  (sooner than that is fine if not better). We will refer to this list as our list of Memorable Moments. Hopefully your child will be able to construct at least 3 narratives from events in the list. They will eventually be choosing from among those narratives one or two which they focus on for elaboration, revising, and editing for publication.

For your child's homework over the next few weeks, choose one event from the list each day and have your child tell the story to you orally. Listen for the following characteristics/items in their speech:

Complete sentences (not run-on sentences or phrases)
A beginning, middle, and closure to the story
Details or examples of dialogue


 Again, if you have any questions regarding this important assignment feel free to post in the comment section. If you would like to post an example for comment I will be glad to review with my thoughts.

Parent Assignment #1

Please find the yellow folder sent home with your child today. Your task:

With your child's input, decorate all surfaces of your child's folder (inside and out) with some or all of the following items:

• Pictures of memorable events from your child's life
• Pictures or advertisements of your child's interests

Pictures of topics which particularly interest your child (your child may have an interest in machines, space, dinosaurs, soccer, etc.)

Before placing something on the folder consider: how will this lend itself to a dicussion between your child and their teacher, or how will this help your child to brainstorm topics for writing?

 Return the decorated folder to school with your child by Wednesday, September 4th.

You might notice that the folders are not very substantial in quality. After the folder is decorated you may want to consider adding a bit of clear packing tape over the items which you have attached. We will be using these folder the entire year.

Please post any questions you may have in the comment section below.

Third Day of School

Thanks to parents for the quick return of nearly all information forms this year. Thank you as well to the parents who sent in facial tissue. We now likely have enough tissue to get us through the entire year.

Quick note about homework: Homework with corrections needing to be made needs to be fixed/corrected and returned again to class for complete credit. More information and tips about homework will be forthcoming at Back-to-School Night on the 4th.

First Day of School

Thank you, parents, for a smooth start to the school year.

There was no student homework assigned today as so many papers were sent home for parent review. Please fill out paperwork and return as soon as possible.

Today we reviewed many important concepts about writing, the alphabet, and phonics and phonemic awareness. Concepts and skills of note:

• The English alphabet contains 26 letters.
• There are 5 vowels and 21 consonants.
• Rhyming
• Intial consonant sound isolation
• Final long-vowel isolation

For Health/Social Science we began our first lesson in the Second-Step Violence Prevention Program.

In Math, we reviewed procedures for oral participation.

Things We Use

If possible, it would be a great help if every student brought in one box of facial tissue, the supply will help us get through the year.

Additionally, it would be a great help if each child could have a new flashdrive (small capacity is fine). Students will store writing projects on these drives. Also, it is easier to transfer the videos we will be making rather than sending them through email services which often put inconvenient limits on file sizes.

Each student should also have a backpack. It is best that backpacks do NOT have wheels.

Students should wear a closed-toed shoe with tie or Velcro fasteners everyday. This is a safety issue and necessary for daily playground and physical education activities. All pierced jewery should be of a stud type with nothing hanging below the lobe of the ear. 

We will have 3 classroom celebrations over the course of the year if you would like to share treats: 

• The last day of the 1st semester before winter break
• The One Hundreth Day of School (date TBA)
• The las day of the second semester before summer.

Please note: We will NOT celebrate individual birthdays in Room 11. Instead, we collectively celebrate our 100th day milestone.

Also, we will share Valentines on Friday, February 14th.

Welcome

This blog has been created to keep parents and guardians of the students in Room 11 at Caroldale Learning Community informed about daily activities in our classroom and school. Please discuss what you read here with your children when appropriate. Ask them clarifying questions. They don't necessarily need to know how you know what happened during their day, they should simply know that you are informed.

Feel free to  respond to what you read by posting a comment or question. Avoid including students' names when responding to posts. General comments and questions are best in this arena.

Please remember the most efficient way to communicate with me on timely issues is to write a note on or attached to your child's homework. For convenience, you might consider linking to this page through an rss feed or through the google reader application.

I am also available for conferences after school most days except Tuesdays. It is okay to drop by without an appointment with questions and concerns.