Sunday, October 28, 2018

Hi All,

As the days get shorter, the weeks seem to be more and more scheduled!

First of all, a big thank you to the parents who came on our terrific aquarium field trip as chaperones. Thanks to Jeanie, Lisa, Carlos, Steve, Ronda, John, and Kristy!  Without parent support, field trips would be very limited!

In addition, thanks in advance to Jeanie and Tarah, our Room Parents. They’ve planned a fun Halloween party for the kids, immediately after our Halloween parade at 8:30. They’ve reached out to Room 9 families, so you should have received a note from them in your child’s folder last Monday. On the Halloween topic, please remember to keep costumes elementary school appropriate, which means no weapons, and not too too gory.

Parent-teacher Conferences are happening the following week, beginning November 5th. I will send home a notice with the schedule, and have some flexibility if you realize you have a conflict. Please arrive promptly for your conference, as many of them are set up back-to-back.

This week we will be wrapping up our Social Studies hyperdoc on California’s Regions. Students who don’t complete the project will need to work to finish at home during Conference Week. We are continuing to focus our reading on Informational Text, and will begin an Informational writing project in a week or so.

Have a great week, and I’ll see you soon!

Carroll Mayer

Saturday, October 13, 2018

Hi All,

First of all, many thanks for your continued support for Rio Del Mar Elementary, as well as Room 9 in particular. We have benefited from family support in so many ways: from your presence in class, at the Harvest Festival, on next week’s field trip, and delivering your children to our SBC Day, to your ongoing financial support through the Drive For Schools fundraiser, class donations of supplies, and funds. Thank you all, for the many ways you help make our school a thriving and joyful place!

This past week, our class was busy, busy, trying to finish up our fictional narratives. The kids wrote so much—yay!—that many needed extra typing time. We will celebrate publication with Mr. McMillan’s and Mr. Avey’s classes this Wednesday. After that, we will begin a short unit on “internal punctuation”, AKA commas, dashes, and semi-colons.

We also took a bit of time away from our story writing to compose short notes to fellow students in Canada. We attached the notes to postcards about Santa Cruz County. Our class will be sending additional postcards to kids across the US and Canada, who we are connecting with via the Global Read Aloud. All our contacts are classes reading the book A Boy Called Bat this month, right along with us. We still need many more postcards about SC County.

In reading, instruction has shifted from fiction to nonfiction. All of the lessons are built around strategies that address skills needed to read nonfiction well. In class, kids split their independent reading time between fiction and informational text. Kids may continue to read any type of book for their nightly reading, and should also be doing 20-40 minutes of work on the Lexia program per week. If your child is below grade level in reading, he/she should have two 20 minute sessions, in addition to the class time on Lexia. On-level students should work on the Lexia program at home once a week, for 20 minutes, and mark it on their homework Choice Board.

In math, we’ve been focusing on the area model (open array) in multiplication. Ask your child about it. I think it’s a neat, and very clear way to learn about the Distributive Property in multiplication!

Finally, this Friday our class —and Mr. Avey’s—will be heading to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for our field trip. Students should bring a lunch and drink, but no money; there will not be shopping opportunities for kids. Kids should arrive to school on time, as we’ll be leaving around 8.

Have a great week!

Carroll Mayer