August 30-September3, 2010

Mrs. Komarek's Newsletter

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. - Helen Keller

Dear Parents,

What a great first week we had! We are quickly getting into the routine of our school day.
We will begin doing reading assessments this week, this will be going on for the next 3-4 weeks. I will be doing the DIBELS and benchmarking assessments.
For those of you that signed up for classroom helpers, I will be ready to start towards the end of September. I will keep you updated of times and days.
Book orders are coming home. This is great time of year to purchase book order books. If we reach a certain amount of orders I am able to order books for our classroom.

Curriculum News:

• Daily Five - Students are quickly regaining their stamina for Read to Self. We have been practicing read to self, making connections with our book, sharing our connections, and learning about how to pick books that are just right. Students have finished another poem this past week about themselves. For word study students have begun working with 4th
  grade high frequency words. Words will come home this week and we will have a test on Friday


• Math - Students had some fun on Monday doing M&M Math and then we jumped right into Place Value. This week students will write numbers in standard form, word name, and expanded form. Numbers will go all the way to the millions place value. We will also compare numbers, round whole numbers, and use money to start to understand decimals.


• Science - This class is very eager to do science each day! So far they have been learning some of the vocabulary words that we will be using in this unit and what elevation is. This week we will take a closer look at what plants and animals live in each land zone of Utah.


• Social Studies/Art - Not only does this class love science but they love the "Utah" song! Students have been working on the symbols of Utah and we have begun to learn about the counties of Utah. After Labor Day I will be assigning a county to each student to do a report on. This will be their first book report.

Important Dates:

• September 6, Labor day


• September 10, School Pictures


• September 13, Back to School Bash


• September 17, Canyon Field Trip


• September 17, Turn off TV week

Homework:

• Daily Math and Language, week #2, Due on Friday


• Nightly reading, mark your minutes on August/September Reading Calendar

Our first full week of school went well, such cute kids with great personalities! We are going to accomplish a lot this year!

Michelle Komarek