January 13, 2013

Welcome back to school!  With conferences happening last week, I did not get a chance to update the blog. We told everyone at conferences that I (Mrs. Pratt) will be taking over teaching for Mrs. Figueroa when she goes on maternity leave.  She is due on January 27 and is planning on working up until then.  We will be sure to let you know when the baby is born.  The other changes that we have in the classroom are that Ms. Noori was asked to move into Mrs. Mott's classroom and we have a new assistant teacher that started today.  Her name is Mrs. Hill.  She will be here full-time with me while Mrs. Figueroa is gone.  She is excited to get to know the kids and start working with them.

Please feel free to contact Mrs. Hill (chill@archwaychandler.org) or me (cpratt@archwaychandler.org) with anything that you need.

Here is what we started last week in our curriculum and will continue this week.

Literature: Last week we started fables.  We discussed what fables are and read "The Country Boy who Cried Wolf."  We also made masks and had the students put on a play with this fable.  This week, we will be reading "Dog in the Manger" and "Maid and the Milk Pail."

History: Last week we started our unit on Early Explorers and Settlers.  All of last week we talked about Christopher Columbus, where he came from, what he was trying to find, and where he did find.  This week we will talk about the first settlers along with some of the hardships they faced as well as their successes.

Science: We have started our unit on Oceans.  This is always a favorite unit for the students.  We started by talking about where the oceans are as well as their names and also the continents and their names.  This week we will also talk about the five different layers of the oceans.

We also started reading groups up again today.  Mrs. Schubring created a new sign-up genius for you to sign up for reading groups.  Please remember to sign-up and come help us with reading groups. Here is the link for the sign-up genius: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F044CABA92F4-classroom1.

Please remember that next Monday is a Martin Luther King Day.  There will be no school that day.  Also, mark your calendars for January 31 which will be a half day.

We hope you all have a wonderful week!