What a beautiful weekend. I hope that your family was able to enjoy it with a special outdoor activity!
The Back-to-School Luau on Friday night appeared to be a great success. I saw Antwan, Benjamin, Larah, Zia, Seth, and Sy'raiah all having a good time. If you were there and I didn't see you, I hope that you had a great time as well. (Some of you were really putting down some dance moves!) Hope to see many of you at our next PTSA event, Skate Night at Sparkles, during the last week of September.
We were able to book a spot for the N GA Fair tours this month. Permission slips and sack lunch orders will be coming home at the beginning of this week. This is a very reasonably priced field trip since we only have to pay transportation costs. Students will stroll through the various exhibits showcasing GA products and will get to see some local and exotic animals from some of the continents we have been talking about. Since we are going at a time that the fair is not open to the general public, we will not have access to rides, games, shows, and foods that are offered to the publc on weeknights and weekends. We encourage parents to take their families for the full fair experience during regular fair hours. The students will receive a "goody bag" at the end of their visit. If you are able and interested in chaperoning a small group of students from our class, let me know this week (we will leave around 9 and return about 1 or so). We have about 130+ school kids/personnel to transport on the 2 school buses, so will be unable to take parents on the bus. If I know who will be coming, we can work out a carpool. I am looking forward to our first field trip! Please return your permission slips and lunch slips (if your child will need a sack lunch from school). Lunch orders are due by Wed.
This week we will begin our weekly spelling check-ups. As mentioned at Parent Night, I do not assign a list of spelling words to "memorize". Students will be introduced to "phonics families" and will be expected to apply beginnings sounds to spell a variety of words. Our families this week are _an and _at. We will also have some high frequency sight words to learn to spell each week so that they can use them as well in their writing. These will come from the shared reading books that we will do in whole class setting weekly. Check the newsletter weekly for the families and sight words to practice.
In writing this week, we will focus on the first of the six traits that improve student writing. In "Ideas", we will work on picking a topic, making the message clear, including interesting details, and maintaining focus. We will be working on narrative writing first because students can write about what has happened to them or what they enjoy. I look forward to reading some great pieces!
Zia will be our first Star of the Week. She will present a poster that she has been working on for the past week. Another student will be chosen at random each Monday to receive a poster to complete for presentation the following Monday.
In science this week, we will be learning about the weather. Let's hope Mother Nature doesn't throw us a curve ball this week. (Although, for the sake of interesting daily journaling, I hope to see some variety!)
Have a great week. Make sure to check out and send in the secret message!
