Lial Primary

April 24, 2012

In the white envelope, you received a letter from Mrs. Beier regarding the third years' involvement in instruction related to child abuse prevention.  They are preparing a "wheel" with names of adults that they know, trust, and who would help them in any situation they may encounter.  They will be bringing those home later this week.

During the week of April 30, Sr. Rose and I will be administering the Writing Competency Test to all the third year students during our normal Religion class time.   There is really no preparation that needs to be done.  The children have been working toward this during their Creative Writing class and during TL.  Of course, we will want them to be well rested and to have eaten a good breakfast each morning.  Sr. Rose and I will prepare them for each step, so they should not be anxious about the process.  The tests will be graded over the summer, so we will not have the results until next school year.

April 15, 2012

We have almost finished learning all of the capital letters in cursive!  I can see that many of the children are improving in their cursive writing.  Correct spacing and sizes of letters is still troublesome for some of them.  Encourage them to practice writing in cursive whenever they need to write something.  Maybe your grocery list...

April 24, 2012

The children have chosen their ocean animals, and everyone is excited!  We will be heading to the Computer Lab tomorrow for their first research opportunity!  Their journals have graphic organizers in them to help them organize their research findings, and we discussed note-taking in class on Monday.  Please feel free to help them find books at the library about their specific animal, or help them research online at home.  They will be writing their reports in class as soon as their research is complete, so we won't want to waste a minute!  If you have any questions, please let me know.

The students did a great job writing their biographies of a famous person!  It was a long process because they wrote the biographies in class, then typed them on our NEO's, so that they could be printed.  In Primary, we have 30 of the NEO's, which are machines that look similar to a laptop and are used for word processing.  After the child has finished typing, we connect the NEO to the computer, which enables us to edit and print their report.  Each of the classes has access to 10 of the NEO's, which is really wonderful!  The children enjoy typing on them!  We are listening to the oral presentations of the biographies as time allows.  It is fascinating to hear about all the famous people that they studied!

Our next big project will be studying the ocean.  Each child will be asked to choose an ocean animal that they would like to research.  I will provide them with headings to put into their journal, which will help them to organize their research.  We will utilize the computer lab a few times to research and take notes.  I will also have books in the classroom that the children are free to use.  Once they have chosen their animal, they may go to the library with you or go online to find information about their animal.  Please do not have them begin researching just yet - we will discuss some of the possible choices this week, and then the children will write their top three choices of an animal they would like to learn about.  At that time, I will let them know which animal they will research - and then they can look for info at home.  They will do the actual writing of the report in class.  Once the report is written, they will get to make a poster in class.  I will provide the posterboard for that.  At that time, they might want to print pictures at home to bring to school for their poster.  We do not have a color printer here at school.  It is wonderful to see how excited the children get about all of the facets of this project!  They especially love to research and design their poster!  It is a great way to keep them engaged as the year winds down.  And, it is a really great learning experience for all of them! 

We will resume our normal spelling schedule this week, with our test on Friday.  This year is absolutely flying past!

Thank you for all you do to help your child!  It makes such a difference!

April 24, 2012

Math 2 has done an amazing time with telling time!  Because we have shorter Math rotations on Thursday because of a special activity with the 4th and 5th year students, we will have their addition and subtraction timed test on Friday instead of Thursday. 

Math 3 is continuing to work on memorizing their multiplication and division facts!  Some of them are moving along really well!  It is really important for them to practice their facts every day, and then to review the other facts that they've already learned.    Thank you for your help with this.  We will have their next test on Friday, April 27.

Math 3 has been working with telling time, and will work next on temperature. 

Math 4 has studied time, temperature, as well as how to find the mean, median, mode, and range of information.  They are currently studying different types of graphs.

You might notice that we don't necessarily cover every page in every chapter.  I am following our Diocesan Course of Study, so we will continue to follow those standards, which means we don't cover each lesson in the book.  The standards are designed so that each grade level builds upon the previous grade level. 

It's that time of year again - Mission Fair time!

For the Mission Fair raffle, all of the family rooms have been asked to provide a basket filled with fun things to be offered as a raffle prize.  Our room will be making up an Arts and Crafts basket.  (We did this theme last year, and it was really great!)  So, we are asking you to send in item(s) that children could use for arts and crafts.  Possible ideas include:  sidewalk chalk, crayons, paints, craft kits, paper, scissors, foam stickies - the possibilities are almost endless! 

The deadline for items is Friday, May 4.  So, please help us fill up our basket for the raffle!  Your help is appreciated!   Thank you!