November 26, 2018

Hello Everyone,

A Note Regarding Scholastic Orders:

I sent home the December 2018 Scholastic Flyer today. Both the November and December orders will be due on Friday, November 30th. This way we can ensure all parcels have arrived at LBS before winter break. Again, if you'd like any orders to be kept secret please inform me via email and I'll let you know when the parcel has arrived instead of sending it home with your child!

Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to attend our November Learning Conferences. It is always a great opportunity to connect with families and share current learning. I hope everyone found their conference experience informative and it provided opportunities to continue your learning at home.

Last week we started to think about the blueprint for our communities. Students worked in small groups to draft where they thought the landforms should be in our communities. This prompted lots of inspiring conversation about the impact of these landforms. Some students decided they should put their community inside our mountain range, in order to keep it protected. Other students were wary about having the river too close to our community, incase of a flood (which would compromise our quality of life). After the blueprints were made, each group had an opportunity to share to the class their design and reasoning, and we will work together to determine the best design for our whole class community. I am hoping we will be able to begin our construction of landforms this week :).

We have also been learning about a strategy for spelling, syllable spelling. Each syllable of a word must contain a vowel! This has been tricky to learn, but we will keep practicing. On the other hand, students have really grasped onto the understanding of long and short vowel sounds! I am hoping to start a more formalized spelling program in the new year for those students who are ready.

Today we began to extend our understanding of growing patterns with some small group lessons on the bead chains. These are a great tool for students to build skills of counting on and skip counting. We have to borrow from the bead cabinet in Ms. Green's room but they will be a responsible work choice for the remainder of the week. In addition, we will be moving on to targeting skip counting in the math curriculum!

Enjoy your evening,
Lindsay Brown