Dear Parents,                                    April 30, 2012

Thank you to all the parents who supported and participated in the Jog-A-Thon on Friday! It was a fantastic success and the students had “The BEST day ever!” (or so they told me!)

Our reading strategy this week is questioning.  Reading the title, looking at the pictures and stopping to ask oneself questions, are strategies good readers use.  The comprehension skill that will help us with understanding a story is compare and contrast.  Understanding how events, characters, etc. are the same and how they are different leads us to a better understanding of the story.  Our phonics focus this week is on the vowel pairs, oi, oy as in boy or oil and aw, au as in saw or sauce.  We are also learning the suffixes –ful, -ly, and –y and our grammar focus is on using describing words.  This week, our spelling words are a mixed vowel review and are from unit 26.  They are posted to spellingcity.com.  Don’t forget to practice!

We will continue our chapter on geometry in math with a strong focus on the difference between solid shapes and plane shapes! In religion we will be spending our time learning how Jesus is with us in His Church. We will be working from our Religion book, Chapter 22. We will turn our attention back to our study of matter in science. In social studies we continue our study of Our World Near and Far.

Congratulations to the speech contest finalists from first grade: Nathan H, Mia, Gracie, Angela, and Jomari! Continue practicing your poems so that you are prepared for the judges on Wednesday.

Announcements for the week:

• “All About Me” this week is… Sierra! Congratulations!
• Please remind your student to bring their library book on Tuesday so that they may check out another one.
• Water bottle sales continue on Tuesday and Thursday for $1.
• On Thursday, we will have our school mass at 8:30am. Please join us if your schedule allows.
• On Thursday, we will also have a special performance from the winners of the speech contest. Fingers crossed for our finalists!
• Friday is our field trip to the Ojai Storytelling Festival! All students are to wear their school uniforms.

Have a fantastic week!

Miss. Manning