Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy February! We will have a small Valentine party on February 12 at the end of the day. It is optional to bring Valentine cards, but please include all students in the class if cards are brought to school.

The following are things happening in Mrs. Wilson's class:

In Reading, we are finishing up our contracts. Please ask your child what novel they read. Most students enjoyed the time to read. We will move on to reading a story a week mixed up with important skills such as reading functional text (lists, menus, recipes, bus schedules) and intepreting them.

In Math, we are finishing up fractions and probability. We will go into perimeter and area. If you have not heard, we took the student workbooks and inserted each page in a plastic sleeve and put into a 2 inch binder. The students have black erasable markers to do their work. The students are excited about it and the system seems to be working out very well. The purpose of this task is to save the worksheets for the next few years as our budget continues to have cuts.

In English, we are deeply involved in a large research project. As of today everyone has met their deadlines. February 5th is the deadline to have "notes" done on their project. We set aside time to work on this each day and I am personally involved in each project helping with notes, explaining words and phrases, and determining the importance of information. Eventually, I hope to have your child become an "expert" on their subject and share with the class. Again, the majority of the project will be done at school. You can help by typing the rough draft. It will be a major grade for English.

In Spelling, we continue with the 20 words per week, with the test on Fridays.
I have about a 90% success rate for this subject, and some students have bonus words.
Great Spellers!

In Science, we are still working on Magnets and Electricity. We had TEP come and talk to our class about electicity safety. They provided some magazine with more information. We also had a "Mad Scientist" visit our classroom. He was amazing and also emphasized electical safety. Ask your child about the electric buzzer toy they received. This was a big hit in the classroom.

In Arizona, we will finish up explorers in the Southwest and move on to Mountain Men.

The next book report will be combined to a Feb/March book report. The next book report will be due on March 12. This book report will be done at school as a power point presentation. Since, our class can only do this in the computer lab, we cannot complete this in one month (due to one lab visit a month). If you would just make sure your child has a book approved by me and have your student work on the reading, I will show them how to do a powerpoint presentation with their book. Each child will then share their project via the smartboard to our class. Fun!

Also, parents are you having your child take advantage of the program Ticket to Read? Students can access this on their computer at home. We do this once in a while at school, but I cannot dedicate enough time for this during school hours. It would be very beneficial to use this at home. Feel free to use this as the 30 minutes of reading each night! Your child should know how to do this at home. Please contact me if you are having trouble and we will get it fixed.

February 10 is an extra early release day to provide time to teachers for conferences. If you are not contacted, rest assured everything is going smoothly for your child. I will only contact you if it is necessary.

Student questions:

1. What is the difference between perimeter and area?

2. What is a stanza in poetry?

3. What is a fable?

Important dates to remember:

Feb. 3.......................pictures
Feb. 5.......................Mr. Dailey(parent) Magnet presentation
Feb. 10......................Early Release for parent teacher conferences
Feb. 10......................Nature shop viewing by 3rd grade
Feb. 11......................Nature shop buying (optional to send money)
Feb. 24......................Rough Draft of Research due
March 5......................Final Typed Research due
March 12.....................Feb/March Powerpoint book project due