Sunday Update

It was great meeting with so many parents on Thursday and Friday. Your children are doing well, and you deserve a lot of the credit for helping them and encouraging them in their school work. Studying for spelling came up quite a bit, and I wanted to share with you a really effective way to help your child learn his/her spelling words. Good spellers can visualize how a word looks before they spell it, so this routine is called Look, Say(and spell), Cover, Write, Check, Repeat. Give your child a list of words. He/she looks at the word, says and spells the word aloud, covers the word, and attempts to write it. He/she then checks to see if it is correct. The process is repeated with the same word. Then, move on to the next word in the list. This routine can be done a couple of times during the week, and should result in really good spelling test scores. I am going to demonstrate this with the kids in class this week, and encourage them to use it at home. In other news: I have posted a slide show of the Chicken Little play which Jenna, Ciera, Aaron, Liam and Kyle presented to our class and to Mrs. McNamee's class. They did an awesome job. Noah, Ella, Gloria and Sami presented The Three Billy Goats Gruff to our class and Mrs. Mullin's class. Watch for that show coming soon on the blog. The other children are anxious do do a play also, and that will happen very soon. Holiday news: As I mentioned in my newsletter, we will not be exchanging gifts (including the teacher) but if you would like to purchase a gift for the classroom - puzzles, markers, stencils, clay, games etc. your child can bring a gift in wrapped, and open it at our party. As you know we try to limit sweets, but I will provide a treat or two so it does feel like a party. If you want to send in stickers, pencils, erasers etc. for the whole class, that will be welcome. If you have any questions about this, just let me know.