Angelville News September 12th - 16th

BON DIA WEEK 1!
September 12, 2011

Bon Dia, Good Day!

WELCOME EVERYONE BACK TO SCHOOL!! WELCOME ALL OF OUR NEW FAMILIES, IT IS SO GOOD TO HAVE YOU ALL AT ST. AL’S! I HOPE TO SEE YOU AT BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT ON WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21st.

Notices

*No school on Friday, Teacher Development Day.
*Each week a Homework packet will go home on Monday to be returned on Friday. This week they will have a comprehension story with questions and a reading log to keep track of their reading. Ideally each student is reading each night. The logs are part of our reader’s workshop and very important to log everything so that we are able to study them in order to become better readers.

*Friday Folders will come home each Friday with their weeks work. This is a great time to sit down with your student and go over what they have done that week. This gives you quality time with your student and also gives you an idea where your student is strong and where your student may need some extra support. I ask that you sign the outside of the folder, take out all of the papers, and return with your student the following Monday. This is part of their grade.

READERS/WRITERS WORKSHOP – Last week we started our new readers and writers workshop curriculum. This year the students will be working on many new reading and writing strategies. The idea behind these two curriculum's is to engage the students to live ("readerly" and "writerly") lives. So far it has been fantastic! I will explain more about these two at curriculum night on the 21st at 7pm.

MATH – This year the 3rd and 4th graders are split up for math. In 4th grade math this week we are working on rounding and place value. Your student will be given math assignments each day for the most part. They will be given time to begin this work. If they finish in class, super! If not they will be bringing it home to complete at home. This is different than the homework packet. Math is every day.

SS/SCIENCE - In Social Studies this week we have started our Studies Weekly newspaper. This year we will be talking about Communities in Washington and the U.S. We will cover SS (M-W) and Science (TH-F). This week in Science we will brainstorm what a scientist is? What does a Scientist look like? We had a great day in the garden last Friday. We will continue to work in the garden throughout the year.

RELIGION - This week we have been talking about our Angelville Community rules. We will also begin the Steps to Respect program.

Hope you all have a wonderful week!!! Contact me with any questions.

Angelville Newsletter

BON DIA
WEEK 37, Last week of school
June 7, 2010

This will be the last Angelville Blog post for the year.

*Reminders:
-Grades will go home on Friday
-Last school mass is at 9am on Friday
-Awards assembly in the Gym on Friday at 10am
-Miz Schmutz will be buying the kids lunch from DICKS on Thursday, you do not need to pack them a lunch. Your student can choose from burger or cheese burger and fries. This comes from a promise I made them at the beginning of the year if they kept and brought back each week their Friday Folders.
-Math test on Wednesday
-Thursday the students will show their Power Point presentations of the companies they have research in Washington.
-This week I will try and post pictures of late field trips and the garden.

If I have forgotten anything I will send it in an e-mail.

Hoping the sun sines on us this week!

-We plan to show our Bridges Story at the Award ceremony on Friday if it works out with all others involved.

Final SS project due June 9th

Final S.S. project, Washington State History

Student projects on Washington today. Students will choose a company in Washington/Seattle and create a Power Point Presentation including the following in their presentation.

· Year your company was established
· Mission of the company
· 5 W’s and 1 H
- Who started the company? Who do they serve?
- When was the company started?
- Where was the company started?
- Why was the company started?
- What does this company do? What is the need for this company?
- How was this company started? How many years did it take for this company to get its feet off the ground?

· Does this company do anything charitable or humanitarian for others or other organizations? Explain
· Does this company employ individuals in its local community?
· Is this company respected in its State/Community? Explain how it is or isn't
· Name some interesting facts you didn’t know about this company that you found interesting.
· Why did you choose this company for your project?

Project Due Date June 9/June 10, show PP to the class.
*Please bring in a thumb drive to store your PP on. If you do not have one I can store it on mine so that we can then share it with the class.

Some company ideas: (Starbucks, Boeing, Microsoft, Eddie Bauer, REI, Amazon, Nordstrom’s,) Some people ideas (Dale Chihuly, Tom Douglas, Rick Steves, Paul Allen, Bill Gates). Please come up with others that are not on this list, but they must have started either in Washington or Seattle.

*You will include pictures from internet in your PP of your company.

BON DIA
Week 35, May 24, 2010

RAVES:
To our SUPER chaperones; Dave, Star, Maureen, that made the long trip down to the Capital Campus with us. We had a great day. We had the amazing opportunity to sit on the House floor in the rep. big leather chairs and hear from one of the representatives from Federal Way. According to our guide she had never seen that before. No one is invited on the floor, we were guessing it was a case of being in the right place at the right time. Upon entering into the Capital Building there was a student choir on all three levels singing Bach. It sounded like angels singing, very special.

REMINDERS:
7:00pm June 3rd, Junior Olympic Performances in the gym.
Friday, June 4th Junior Olympics and lunch from the different countries. Early out.

ACADEMICS:
We are wrapping up our year. I am going to give a time line of what to expect in the next few weeks of 4th grade.

Math: We will begin to review our different math units learned this year. We will have a final Math test on Wednesday, June 9th. I will hand out that review guide to the students today. We will also have a math quiz this Friday the 28th over our Solving Problem unit.
Religion: The students have turned in their Saint Reports. The students will present their Saint Reports to the class on Wednesday, May 26th. They will also write to the Saint in their own life who resembles likeness to the Saint they did their reports on. We will have a visit from Deacon Joe on Thursday, a visit from a community member about being goods stewards of the earth and gardening, today. We will also work out a day where we can walk down and see her community garden here in Ballard. When we decide on that day I will send home a slip for you to sign since we will be crossing 14th. The remaining days we will work in the garden, planting, weeding, and just plain tending.
Reading/Social Studies: This Friday, June 28th we will have a quiz over chapters 11-13. We will also continue to read through chapters 14-16 in the Social Studies book. Much of what we are now reading about we saw and experienced on our Capital Building visit. The quiz for Chapters 14-16 will be on June 3rd. The students will begin to explore a company in Washington/Seattle today. They will work on this project in pairs. They will present their company to the class on Thursday, June 10th. We will start this company project late this week, Wednesday or Thursday. I will be conducting QRI assessments to those students who read at or below a 4th grade reading level at the beginning of the year. If your student read at a middle school level at the beginning of the year I will not re-give him/her the QRI (Qualitative Reading Inquiry).
Science: We will go through the Sun, Moon, and Stars Foss kit; this will take us to the end of the year. This test will be the last week of school; I’m not sure the date yet.
LA: In our English Voyages book we will continue parts of speech with adverbs. We will also write our own versions of the book; There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly. I will be driving over to the teacher learning store to pick up these books. Boxes of 10 books are sold for $30. I ask that you send in $3 dollars for your student’s book.
Bridges: We hope to finalize the bridges editing this week. I would like to invite all of the families in to see our digital story the last week of school. I will let you know on the date when we have finished the story.

Have a great week :)

Angelville News

BON DIA

Week 34, May 17, 2010

WOW! Can't believe we are in week 34!

RAVES:

*Dave, Maureen, and Monica for driving to Edmond's. We couldn't have had a better day! Great Field Trip, kids were SUPER!

*4th graders for their continual garden stewardship. We had a nice time showing the garden to the Pre-kers last Friday. The 4th graders showed them around, explained what was growing and then read stories to them in the garden on the tree stumps from Nora's yard. We love the stumps to sit on Nora, Thank You!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

*Olympia Field Trip this Friday, 21. We will leave right at 8:30am and return just before the end of the day. Students will need to wear their Green Team t-shirts and uniform shorts or pants. Hoping it will be another nice day.

ACADEMICS:

*This week we are going to finish up our Saints' reports. We will work in the lab to finish these. I will collect them on Thursday. In Math we will continue with our Problem Solving Unit. Due to the ITBS tests last week, we didn't do much math. In reading/S.S. we will read Chapters 14-16 in our SS book and answer the questions at the end of the chapters. The test for this unit will be the last week of school. I will give you plenty of notice and a review guide prior to the test date. In L.A. we will review parts of speech, and next week we will write our own There was an....................who......................, books. We also continue to finish up our Digital Story. We recorded the audio last week and will begin to plug in the digital pictures this week. There are still some shots I need the students to capture. I will put together a shot list today and please let me know if you can help your student capture these shots.

Have a great week!

Angelville News

BON DIA

Week 33, May 11, 2010

I apologize for the late Newsletter. I was without my computer yesterday.

RAVES:

*Annie Cast, what a great job each and everyone of those students did to contribute to the beauty of that musical.

*Great sunny weekend, YAY!

*4th graders for always working as a team! You all are great!

REMINDERS:

*3-4 Science club on Friday

*4th grade field trip to Edmonds Beach on Thursday, keeping my fingers crossed that it is a great day! Make sure to pack your kids a sack lunch we will enjoy our lunch at the beach.

*Good night sleeps and breakfast this week, ITBS testing

*May take the kids down the street on Friday to visit a community members garden who wants to be active in our school garden. Will send home a note if we do. She just lives a few blocks.

ACADEMICS:

*Well as you probably know we are in the throws of the ITBS testing all this week, so our curriculum is minimal. We are still working on our Bridges story and your student may be asked to capture a picture around our home. You may see one of the school's cameras coming home. I believe we will have a visit from a Bridges Member this week to help us record our story and match up the pictures.

*The students are working on researching their Saints in the lab. They were all given a requirement sheet of information to gather and the rubric that they will be assessed on. If they follow the rubric they should receive a perfect score. This project is all up to them. At this point int he year I need to see that they are self learners and are able to handle this project on their own. I am only asking for 3 paragraphs on their Saint, making sure they are able to capture all of the information in those 3 paragraphs.

*We will work ahead in our SS curriculum and the birth of Seattle in reading. We are also moving forward in our Science, Sun-Moon-Stars-and layers of the earth.

Have a Sunny Week!

Angelville News

BON DIA

Week 32, May 3, 2010

RAVES:

*Lets hear it for the Annie Cast! Wow, so impressive!

*Lets also hear it for the students 5 Paragraph Expository Writings. If you are in the building please come up to see the board outside the classroom. We are now working on our artist vase art, we will put those on display when they are finished.

REMINDERS:

*Early out tomorrow, Tuesday 4th

*Mary crowning Friday, 7th on the second floor in front of Mary. Have your students bring flowers that day.

*Friday is a non-uniform day

*ITBS testing will begin the week of May 10th

ACADEMICS:

*This week we are going to work really hard to get our Bridges Script completed and begin to work on our shot list. Monica, I was wondering if you or any other parents would mind coming in to talk to me about this project so we can stay on track to finish the digital story. In reading/SS we will continue this week to work on Unit 8 and Unit 9 - Early Settlements. We are now in the final unit of SS - Seattle!

*In LA we are going to work on creating our own Magazine. This will be a first go-around trying this so we will see how it goes. Will probably be working on this project for a few weeks. Thursday we are going to plant some things in the garden with the Kindergartners.

*In Math we are also working on our last Unit of the year, Problem Solving. I am also going to introduce negative numbers. Students will plot integers on a (x,y) coordinate plane. After completing this unit we will review all units and take a final cumulative math final at the end of the year.

Have a great week!