Celebrate Reading!

Next week the Lower Division will celebrate Reading!
Our theme is: Shorecrest Gets a Charge Out of Reading
Monday-Author Visit: We will have a visit from author Michael O'Neill.
Tuesday-Book Character Dress Up Day: We will have Town Meeting on Tuesday this week...not on Monday...so that we can see students from other grades dressed as their favorite book character. Every child needs to complete the "Act It Out" book report, but dressing up is optional. Please refer to the parent letter sent home earlier this week regarding dressing up on Tuesday.
Wednesday- Drop Everything and Read: We will all stop and read from 8:15-8:45 on this day. What a great way to emphasize the importance of reading! You might want to help your child select a few favorite books to read during this time.
Thursday-Afternoon Reading Festival: This begins at dismissal. If your child is not participating, then dismiss as usual. The workshops will begn at 3:15. There will be volunteers to help guide you to the different locations. Please attend the workshops that you are signed up for.
Friday- Friday is Grandparent's Day! We hope to see all our Grandparents and Special Friends!

I will post another blog on Monday to let you know how our 100th Day of School went!

Have a great weekend!

Math Games

A large part of our mathematics instruction involves children playing math games. It's so wonderful to watch the children excited to play the games while learning important math concepts. The photos above show them playing a game in which they add the dice sums then record their answers to make predictions as to which number will come up most frequently. They were working with a "buddy" to help check their answers. After the game, we tallied our responses to form our conclusions. This way of teaching math is a hands-on approach and involves higher order thinking. Research has proven that learning by doing is the best way to learn. So, we will continue to play in class!

Other news...Spirit Day is Wednesday, January 27th. Can you believe that the 100th day of school will be Friday, January 29th? Wow! Grandparents Day is Friday, February 5th. If you have not sent in a picture yet, please send one in as soon as possible.

Robust Vocabulary Words for the next two weeks are:

This week...courteous, devious, rapidly, unreasonable, gullible, hastily

Next week...grumbling, chided, realized, bitterly, dwelling, amusement

Hope you all have a fantastic week!

Robust Vocabulary Words

As you know, each week the students learn five new words that go along with our main story of the week. These words are called "Robust Vocabulary" since they are words that are oftentimes new to their vocabulary. Spelling the words is not the requirement rather understanding them in the context of a story is the goal. By the end of the week you should be able to ask your child what the words mean.
Robust Vocabulary Words for this week:
bulged, jostled, argue, command, labored, wary

*Reminder: There is no school next Monday.

Have a wonderful week!

Happy New Year!

Everyone was bursting with excitement to be back at school today! It was fun to hear the students share their favorite part of the winter break. Now we're back to working hard (and having fun along the way)!

A few reminders...
Word Cards are due Thursday.
Our spelling test on Friday does include a dictation sentence. I will use at least two of the word card words in the dictation sentence.
Book checkout is always on Tuesday.
School is closed on January 18th.

Robust Vocabulary words this week:
agreement, unnoticed, unthinkable, rejoice, predicament, extraordinary

Wishing you a wonderful week!