December News

Time is racing by and it's almost Christmas! The class has been working very hard on our song for the concert. Many children in our class have also joined the primary choir and will be performing additional songs for the concert on the 18th.
I have to take a moment to share how proud I am of the children in this class. We have come such a long way since September in our reading and writing. They continue to amaze me each and every day. I can tell you wholeheartedly that I feel very blessed to be their teacher. We are having such a wonderful year together!
 Hopefully you and your child have had an opportunity to check out the raz-kids online reading program. Some of you are already familiar with it from previous years. I apologize that it was so late coming. The original account that was set up for our class wasn't working so we had to wait on approval for another and Mr. Ouellette just received it a week ago. I know that its a wonderful tool for those who do have computer and internet access. We will also be using the school netbooks to practice in class later in the year. Remember that students can write each raz-kids book on their reading log and it will count as a book read for our reading competition throughout the year.

The curriculum this month will be centered around the theme of the holiday and Christmas season. We will be exploring some beautiful literature as a class and we will continue to work on our reading comprehension strategies and skills in both small groups, partners and as a whole class. The kids are working at remembering to stop and think while they read. They have special bookmarks that we made that help to remind them of the special kinds of questions they should ask themselves as they read to improve reading comprehension.
In writing, I have special news...... our letters to Santa have been answered! He delivered them right to our school today..... they even arrived ice cold!! Our writing this month will be writing in response to reading activities. In math, students continue to complete the unit on measurement. We have just begun to learn about area. We will hopefully have a little bit of time to begin learning about 3D geometry where we study the attributes of shapes such as spheres, rectangular prisms, triangle based pyramids etc. We have lots of fun in this unit because in order to explore we get to do some fun building! In social studies we will continue to explore our local community of Brantford. I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank all the parents that have given us their valuable time to come in speak with the children. What an amazing opportunity it has been for us.

If I don't see you personally before the holidays, I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hopefully you all have some time off to rest and relax and enjoy family time.

See you in 2014!