Mrs. Connor's
Newsletter
September 11, 2015
Classroom News
MAP testing will begin next week.
Our class will be taking the Reading
MAP test on Tuesday, September
th
15 and Math MAP on Wednesday,
September 23rd.
Sarah Adams students have begun
lessons in the 4Rs which are
Reading, wRiting, Respect and
Resolution. These are lessons that
help develop children’s social and
emotional skills. The overall thrust of
the 4Rs is to create a caring
classroom community. Your child will
be bringing home a 4Rs Family
Connection Parent Letter with
activities to do at home that support
their lessons at school.
Please check the calendar section of
the class website for upcoming dates
and special events.
Star Student Posters
I will be completing a Star Student poster
about myself as a model for the students
to follow. When your child brings home
a poster, please look for the due date on
the back side of the poster.
Reading Workshop
The boys and girls are enjoying the time they
spend each day reading and discussing all kinds of
fantastic books. This week, we shared our thoughts
and feelings about our reading. I read the class a
story about a little chicken that gets very excited and
involved when her father reads her a story. As the
story gets going, the little red chicken jumps in and
interrupts her father in mid-sentence. She just can’t
help herself because she is so excited about the
story. The boys and girls reflected on their personal
experiences reading with family members. It is
important for the boys and girls to stop and reflect
what they like to read and why. This week, students
are talking to their “turn and talk” partners about their
favorite book topics and types of books they enjoy
reading. In an effort to help your child see that
reading happens all the time, for various purposes
and at many different places, please take a minute to
discuss your personal reading experiences with your
child. I will be sending home a chart for you to circle
all that apply to help guide your discussion. Please
have your child return the chart to school. Enjoy!
Reading Logs I will be asking each student to share their Reading Log with me next week. I will ask
them to reflect on the types of books they are reading and share their favorite stories. I will check in
with each student making sure they are self-selecting good fit books.
Email address: molly.connor@lz95.org
Phone Number: (847) 540-2874
Science The boys and girls are
enjoying our first science unit on
pushes and pulls. They have
learned that pushing and pulling are
two forces that move objects. Push
moves things away from you and pull
moves things toward you. Also,
direction is the path an object takes.
Our next experiment has the students
investigating how they can make a
paper cup move on strings without
touching the cup.
Social Studies The first
lessons in social studies focus on the
different types of communities; rural,
suburban and urban. Look for an
assignment to come home that has
your child finding “City Facts” about
Lake Zurich!
Math
The students are working in Module 1 and have
completed about half of the lessons. They have been busy
working on reading and writing two and three-digit
numbers. Students have used a place value mat plus
base ten blocks to model numbers up through 999.
Students are gaining a firm understanding that the three
digits of a three-digit number represent amounts of
hundreds, tens and ones.
They used a hundreds chart to locate different numbers.
For example, I would ask where is the number that is five
more than 20? OR Where is the number that is five
before 80?
They cut out four paper strips and joined them together to
make a long number track going from one to 85. The trick
was to figure out what order to place the strips on the
track when the only numbers they were given were 20, 30,
40, 50, 60, 70, and 80. They did an awesome job
assembling their tracks!
The boys and girls enjoyed asking each other where
certain numbers such as 37 or 69 would be located on
their track.
.
Words Their Way
Your child will have their
first word sort to complete
this Monday evening. I will
attach a letter that will
explain how they should
sort their words and
complete the Monday
evening assignment. This
will be their Monday
evening homework for
most of the school year.
Please let me know if you
have any questions. Tests
are on Friday.
Next week: Comparing and Ordering numbers on a
number line, even/odd numbers and Solving Number
Puzzles!
Writing
As we begin our classroom Writing Workshops, the boys
and girls are decorating a heart shaped puzzle listing all
the people, places, things and activities that they love.
This will help them come up with ideas to write about this
year. I will be reviewing the steps of the writing process
using the Write Source textbook. The first piece of writing
your child will be working on is a descriptive paragraph. I
will be modeling each of the three parts of a paragraph:
the topic sentence, body sentences and a closing
sentence. To begin, I will model my own descriptive
paragraph about my grandson, and we will write a
descriptive paragraph together!