Wednesday, January 11th

Student Teacher: I am excited to announce that starting tomorrow we will have a student teacher in our room unil April! Her name is Miss Jones and she seems very sweet and caring. The students met her on Friday and many have already taken a great liking to her. Yay! We look forward to helping her learn and grow as a teacher...I'm sure the kids will provide her with some great material :).

Homework Bags: As I'm sure you already know we are switching our homework regime to include some reading practice as well. I will be sending homework bags home every Friday to be completed by the following Friday. There is a schedule in the bag; however, you may choose to finish the homework any time during the week. The reading homework is leveled for each student so that they can, and should try,  to do the majority of the reading independently. Please remember that this reading homework will also count towards DEARABBY minutes.

Sight Word Assessments: It is the middle of the year and it is time to take a sight word inventory to see how our students are progressing! This week Mrs. B and I have been working to find the sight word list that each student can read independently. Once a student misses a sight word we stop and this is the list that this student will now work on until mastery. I have been sending home the assessments as we finish. Please take a look at the list where we stopped with your student and begin reviewing that list of words at home! In a couple of weeks we will assess again.

Gumball Math: This is a new program that we have started in our classroom. With the gumball math, students will be taking timed quizzes on addition and subtraction facts to 10. Now, I have not always been a huge fan of timed quizzes but I truly think that for many of our students this program with small incentives along the way will boost operation skills and fluency. Each test is given based on where the student is in the program. For example, yesterday everyone started on addition facts (+1). They were given 4 minutes to complete 50 problems. If the student got all problems correct they moved on to the next level today. With each level passed the students get to place a gumball in the machine outside of our classroom.

With this said, we talked today about how no prizes are handed out for passing a quiz (the gumballs are just pieces of paper) and it is ok to stay on one quiz for a while. The idea is that as they practice they will get better. I have not done anything like this with little ones yet and I am hoping that it fosters confidence and the will to succeed. However, if I find that this is making students upset more than boosting skills we will stop. Keep your fingers crossed...they have done well so far and seem excited to advance!

Report Cards- Report cards go home on Friday. I will setting up another volunteerspot conference sheet online for those of you who would like to come in and discuss student growth and progress. This is optional, but please know I am HAPPY to meet with every one of you. This is such an important year for our students.

Well, folks, that is all for today. Thank you for making my job easier by being the best parents a teacher could ask for!