Tadpole Telegram May 19-23, 2014
On November 8, 1895, William Conrad Röntgen (accidentally) discovered an image cast from his cathode
ray generator. A week after his discovery, Röntgen took an x-ray photograph of his wife's hand, which clearly
revealed her wedding ring and her bones. Röntgen named the new form of radiation, “X radiation” (X standing
for unknown); hence the term x-rays. The images produced by x-rays are due to the different absorption rates of
different tissues. Calcium in bones absorbs x-rays the most, so bones look white on a film recording of the x-ray
image, called a radiograph.
Monday –Students worked on the spring writing prompt. The class had to work independently as they demonstrated their
current writing ability. To meet the standard students were expected to use spaces between words, punctuation, upper and
lower case letters, initial and final sounds of words, and use some of our high-frequency words. This is one of the many
end of the trimester assessments primarily in literacy and math where students are demonstrating the amazing growth they
made this year. Math assessments challenged students to demonstrate his or her knowledge of addition and subtraction.
We have only one library class left this year; please remember to return all library books to school.
Tuesday – The surprise box contained x-rays of a variety of animals. We examined x-rays of snakes, monkeys,
chameleons, hawks and more! At birth the human skeleton is made up of 275 bones, but some of those bones, such as
wrist and anklebones, fuse together leaving only 206 bones in an adult. The class practiced listening for the /ks/ sound in
words as they read their new decodable reader. The students worked on creating an x-ray of their ribs and backbone. We
earned more stickers for everyone returning their books to library than any other class at RES. Monday, June 2nd is our
last library class before it closes for inventory.
Wednesday – The class finished their illustrations about what they like to do with his or her grandparents, just in time to
share them with family on Grandparents’ Day. We started the letter Uu week. Everyone enjoyed our book Messenger,
Messenger about a bike messenger in a big city. The S.M.I.L.E. packets went home with four more students this week.
Thank you for playing the S.M.I.L.E. math games with your children. I hope you had an opportunity to not only have fun
quality time together but learned something about your child's math abilities in the process.
Thursday –Today was an underwater day! Our morning graph showed that most of the students could swim underwater!
Students created a bug game focusing on the ug word family. Hopefully, they had a chance to play the game with
someone at home. Students started illustrating our What is Underwater? book. Leila was chosen as Artist of the Week
for her incredibly detailed drawing showing herself diving with plants, fish and whales. Students incorporated our new
high frequency word “said” into their writing. Everyone was excited about adding character dialogues to our stories. The
class worked on identifying and creating rhyming words and demonstrating his or her ability to write both upper case and
lower case letters correctly.
Friday – Everyone enjoyed walking to school! The entire school walked the Frog Pond Trail. Today's topic: What is
ugly? We had a very interesting discussion about what each of us considered ugly and that someone else might have the
opposite opinion. I was surprised by the number of students who have never heard the story of The Ugly Duckling.
Students played the Hidden Bean Game with a partner. You can play this at home. All you need are 10 small objects
(pennies will do), divide them between your hands and show him or her how many are in one hand. Then they have to
figure out how many are in the other hand. This is a great way for your child to demonstrate his or her mathematical
thinking. Have a happy Memorial Day; I’ll see you on Tuesday, May 27th! The Academic Share is Wednesday,
June 4th from 5:30 to 6:30. Grandparents Day is Friday, June 6th; please join us from 8:30 to 11:00 am with a
special opening at 10:00 am! Thursday, June 12th, is our field trip to the ocean environment at East End Beach
and our trip on the Narrow Gauge Railroad. Thank you to all the parents who offered to help.