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Dear Parents:
We have two days of note this week. The first, of course, is Veteran's Day on Tuesday (no school). The second is the Brookwood Parent Night on Wednesday from 6-7PM. This is a casual night for your child to show you his/her work and explain how the daily choice block works.
We had a fantastic outing to the Fenimore Art museum last week! I hope your child shared his/her journal and the Earl Cunningham program with you. Perhaps you might like to make a second visit to the exhibit with your child. It is a gift to have such an important folk art exhibit right in our backyard.
Through the generosity of the parents and the PTO, we should have TWENTY educational CD ROMS delivered to the classroom as soon as Friday! Thank you very much for your effort in building this educational library for the students. We can't wait for them to arrive! We have four laptops (donated second hand from Bassett) that we temporarily borrowed from the (soon to be) computer center upstairs. When we need to return them, we will use the CD's upstairs instead.
We are now moving into the time of year where students are experiencing less review and more new material across the board. Your child may seem a bit anxious. Please remind her/him to follow this sequence when searching for an answer:
1. Re-read directions carefully.
2. Review the support material again(textbook, dictionary/encyclopedia, other classroom materials)
3. Ask another student for a hint
4. Ask me for direction
This sequence forces the student to actively search for the answer and take responsibility before relying on others. I always remind the students that they are not learning unless they experience some frustration along the way.
Please make a review of your child's Weekly Words part of his/her nightly routine. If your child is in 5/6, the weekly words are now coming from a book they are using for reading comprehension, Reading Comprehension in Varied Subject Matter. They just moved from the level 1 workbook as a primer to levels 3 through 5, depending on ability. The new workbooks are more demanding in content, vocabulary, and writing. I like this series and feel it is an excellent workbook for standardized test preparation (without the students actually realizing it). It draws from subjects across the curriculum (social studies, literature, math, science, the arts, philosophy, and logic).
The students continue to work in two directions in mathematics: text/workbooks for grade-level math skills and another workbook series for fractions (Key Press). The Key Press series will take the students through fractions, decimals, measurement, geometry, and algebra. The series is intended for grades 4-8, so the students will be growing with this series.
Grades 5 and 6 will be working on book reports over the next two weeks.
I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday evening; please let me know via email or phone if you cannot make it to the Parent Night.
Lisa
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