Friday, May 13th

Happy Friday 301 Families!

 It has been a fantastically busy week in Room 301! Thank you to everyone who sent in donations for our "Movie-PJ-Cupcake Decorating Party" today - it has been a BLAST!

Reader's Workshop

This week in Reader's Workshop reading groups met only at the beginning of the week. If you can believe it, it is already time for me to start doing "End of the Year Assessments" and I have spent time with the kids individually working on these assessments (letter ID, writing sight words, reading high frequency words, etc.) Meanwhile we have had Reader's Workshop every day this week and we have been working on finding words with the beginning sounds of either "sh", "qu" or "ch". We brainstormed giant lists of possible words after reading mentor texts that featured each of these spelling patterns. To remind ourselves of the "ch" sound we even had home-made chocolate chip cookies! Students also spent time in partnerships working on finding these words within their books.

Writer's Workshop
Thank you to everyone who has sent in farm animal facts for our reports! We spent time this week first creating a t-chart where the kids worked in their animal groups to generate a list of things they already know about their animal and a list of things they wonder about their animals. We want to activate their prior knowledge first so that we can add onto this knowledge easier with new information. Next week we will be taking all of our findings and putting them into words for our non-fiction books about the animals. Info will be coming out next week about a "Down on the Farm" day in 301 coming early in June where we will be celebrating all of our written work.

Math
Numbers, numbers and more numbers! This week we spent a great deal of time working with the hundreds chart. We made a hundreds chart as a whole group and individually with the expectation of NO backwards numbers.... and everyone could actually do it!! :-) We spent time working with a hundreds chart on the Smartboard that can also show us patterns in counting. This week we worked on counting by 5s and counting by 2s. Both of these concepts are still tricky for many of our kids. Look for a packet coming home next week that will give you ways to practice and play with the number grids at home now and over the summer!

Important News:
Snack Leader:  Monday: Geneva; Tuesday: Gabby; Wednesday: Emma; Thursday: Hannah; Friday: Robby 


News from the WL Administration:

Town Hall Meeting on School Funding

It is a jointly sponsored event through the parent legislative action groups from Farmington, Northville, Novi, Plymouth-Canton, West Bloomfield, and Walled Lake

 

Monday, May 16, 2011

7 to 9 PM 

Walnut Creek Middle School

 

The parents have invited 12 Michigan House Representatives and Senators to their event.  The following agenda has been published -

• Michigan General Fund and School Aid Fun Overview
• Proposed K-12 Budget and Reform Legislation
• Legislator Positions on Passed and Pending Bills
• Public Questions
• Public Comment

 

A perfect opportunity, close to home,  to speak to the people who are making decisions regarding YOUR FUTURE!!!!

 

Attention:  Neither Mike Kowall nor Eileen Kowall have agreed to attend the Forum!  Write or call them and tell them to attend!