Awesome-Autumn-Appleseed!

Hello! I hope you're enjoying your weekend!

This past Wednesday marked the first day of Autumn, as well as our field trip to the Great Frederick Fair! The students did a wonderful job - and what a great opportunity!!

In keeping with the Autumnal theme, we will be reading about Johnny Appleseed this week!

Your child will be coming home with a paper book about Johnny Appleseed, please keep this book in his/her book baggie all week long.

Before I go any further, I would like to bring something to your attention that has become a concern of mine. Please understand that I know not all students are directly involved in any of these situations, but there are enough students for me to bring it to the attention of the entire class. I have received messages, in one form or another (email, notes, verbal) expressing concerns about some unsafe behaviors that are happening between the students in our class. By unsafe I mean anything from running in the hallways, to yelling in one another's face, to bullying (teasing, leaving students out, etc.) on the playground. What concerns me the most is the safety of the students. Second, these behaviors are occurring during times where there is less adult supervision - in the hallways and at recess specifically. I took some time on Thursday to reread a book that we read towards the beginning of the year as a model for the "Respect" pillar of Character Counts. The book, Do Unto Otters, shows examples of the Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" or "Treat others the way you want to be treated"
As a class, we reviewed what it means to treat others the way you want to be treated. We reviewed the concept that while you don't need to be best friends with everyone, you do need to be respectful to everyone. We also reviewed the appropriate choices to make if someone is bothering you. For example, tell them to stop in a strong voice, ignore, walk away, if the situation doesn't improve, go tell an adult - all appropriate ways. Finally, we reviewed that just because an adult (teacher, parent, babysitter, etc.) isn't standing right next to them, doesn't give them permission to stop being respectful. I know that all our students usually DO treat others the way they want to be treated. We're all human, we all steer off the path every once in a while. It's just important that we steer back onto it again as quickly as possible :)
I would greatly appreciate it if you could communicate a similar message at home. Thank you so much!!


Moving on :)


We will be using the story of Johnny Appleseed,as well as many other Tall Tales, during our study of Short Stories. The Short Stories unit will focus on story elements (character, setting, problem, solution), genres of Short Stories (Tall Tales, Realistic Fiction, Fables and other Folktales), as well as utilizing their knowledge of the Writing Process and Good Traits of Writing to respond to questions.

Short a words will continue to be our focus for spelling. Students will be bringing home their spelling lists this week. Ten words will be assigned to the whole class, the other ten will be of their choice. The spelling lists will come home on a piece of journal paper, with a typed list of the assigned words glued to it. Please note that students will be expected to write sentences on their next spelling quiz. Students must use five of their spelling words (their choice) and include them in 3-5 sentences. Words must be spelled and used correctly. Each sentence will be worth 4 points - capitalization, punctuation, spelling and usage. The ten assigned words are available on Spelling City for practice!! To search for the list, click on the "Find a List" tab, then type "Mawhinney" into the search window. Surprisingly enough, my name is the only name that comes up :)(Not too many Mawhinneys I suppose!!) Just click on my name and that will take you to the available lists for my class. As of right now, Short A is the only available list. Practicing words on Spelling City ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY counts for a spelling practice activity :)

Math this week will have some multi-digit addition practice, as well as some place value and number line practice. I must say I am really impressed with how ALL the students are progressing with their Mad Minute Quizzes - way to go kiddos!!

We will be finishing up the Drug Awareness Unit this week, with a quiz on Friday. The study guide for the quiz was sent home Thursday in the Home-School Folders. This is just a reference tool for you and your child to use together in preparation for the quiz. This does not need to be returned to school. Thank you!

We will also be beginning our Star of the Week schedule! I have done a Star of the Week - style project in the past, but have recently changed a few things based upon the way Mrs. Brunner does hers. I think this way really allows the student to practice a wider variety of content area skills - in addition to their moment in the spotlight!

Star of the Week is a time for everyone in our class to celebrate the uniqueness of the student being honored. It provides an opportunity to recognize the qualities that make the individual a good friend, a good student, and other ways they display the Character Counts pillars. It is a wonderful occasion for students to share and to be appreciated.

Each student will have the opportunity to be the Star of the Week. A schedule of the Stars of the Week will be coming home this coming week (in addition to being posted towards the bottom of this post). The week before your child's turn to be Star of the Week, a Star of the Week bag will be sent home that will include a personal information sheet, some timeline templates, as well as a set of directions. On the date indicated, your child should return the bag with the completed information sheet, timeline, and a few small items that might help define who they are. The timeline will probably be the most time-consuming activity so you may encourage your child to begin thinking about and planning for it in advance. The purpose of the timeline is to reinforce the sequencing of events and help them understand the passage of time. (It also correlates PERFECTLY with Math - as we're using number lines this week - wooo hoo!)

My favorite part of the Star of the Week is that it encourages a sense of community and increases self-esteem. A wonderful keepsake that each student will receive is a book of friendly letters from all the classmates affirming his/her positive character traits. It's important that all students feel welcome and respected. I am confident that an end result of this project will be that students will feel good about who they are and what they do.

I hope that you will make a note on your calendars as to when it's your child's turn to be Star of the Week.

To model what is expected for the Star of the Week presentations, Johnny Appleseed will be our first star of the week! The rest of the schedule is below:

10/4/10 Diego
10/11/10 Trixy
10/18/10 Connor
10/25/10 Emma
11/8/10 Maegan
11/15/10 A.J.
11/29/10 Jemma
12/6/10 Helen
12/13/10 Sophia
12/20/10 Gabriel
1/3/11 Damien
1/10/11 Nicholas
1/24/11 Kristina
1/31/11 Nikita
2/7/11 Chelsea
2/14/11 Hasita
3/7/11 DeVante
3/14/11 Kevin
3/28/11 Drew
4/4/11 Matthew
4/11/11 Joseph
5/9/11 Thomas

Thank you again for your continued support! As always, please email me with any questions or concerns you may have.

Have a wonderful weekend :)

K.M.