Newsletter 11: Week of November 19

Week Overview

We had an awesome week together and made some huge steps in the Daily 5 and guided reading groups! I hope you’ve found a few minutes to practice the literacy activities your child brought home on Friday. They were so proud of themselves and they have lots of reasons to feel that way! I’m proud of them too! 🙂

Even though I missed one of the days for being sick, it was good to have a full week! I’m looking forward to a 2-day week coming up! We’ll be doing some literacy and math activities centered on the themes of Thanksgiving and being grateful. There will be no additional newsletter blog post next week so I want to say now how incredibly grateful I am for all of you. I love spending my days with your children and the classroom “family” we’re building brings me great joy. I couldn’t do my job without your support. Thank you for the prayers, encouragement, and all kinds of help!


Important Dates

November 21: Picture Trading & Friendship Fruit Salad

November 21: Chapel 1:00

November 22-24: Thanksgiving Break

December 15: NO pm bus or hot lunch

December 25-January 5: Christmas Vacation


Reminders

  • Picture Trading: In celebration of Thanksgiving we will trade pictures of ourselves with our friends. This lesson will go along with our brief learning about the First Thanksgiving. Please send in wallet size photos or 4×6 size photos of JUST your child. Your child will need to bring in 19 copies. Often Meijer or Snapfish will run a deal with photos costing just a few cents. I am informing you early, with hopes you can find a deal somewhere. 🙂 We will trade photos on November 21st.
  • Friendship Fruit Salad: One of the things we’re looking forward to as a part of our Thanksgiving celebration is making a fruit salad together. Please help your child bring a small portion (no more than 1 cup) of their favorite fruit prepared and ready to eat on Tuesday, November 21. For example, if it is an apple, please bring apple slices not a whole apple. 🙂 We’ll combine our favorite fruits and share “friendship fruit salad” together.
  • SignUp Genius: There are still a few slots open on our Thanksgiving & Nativity Scene Prep SignUp Genius. If you would like to volunteer, please use this link. 
  • Helpful Links from the Office:
    • 2017-2018 ZCS Family Directory: The ZCS Family Directory contains staff, Board members, and family contact information as well as class lists. The directory remains in Google Docs, has been fully updated, and will continue to reflect the most current information. Please email zcsinfo@zcs.org to request changes or updates. (Remember to take notice of the tabs across the bottom of the document for easy access to each section!)
    • 2017-2018 ZCS Family Handbook: The ZCS Family Handbook contains information such as school start times, cancellations and delays, calendar, dress code, hot lunch information, etc. It can be found on the ZCS Parents page. Scroll down to find the link.

Curriculum

Bible: This week in Bible every student got the opportunity to say their memory verse for a prize/certificate. We started learning our new memory verse below. We also talked about peace, the next Fruit of the Spirit. We discussed different things that help us feel God’s peace.

Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbios 3:5-6 Confía en el Señor con todo tu corazón y no en tu propia inteligencia. Reconócelo en todo tus caminos y Él enderezará tus veredas.

Literacy: Daily 5 has been going super well! Each child has a check-in sheet. Before beginning a new round of Daily 5, everyone touches the picture that corresponds to the center they’d like to do that round and I cross off the picture as I check everyone in. It was such a joy to be able to meet with every guided reading group this week- most of them 2-3 times!

In grammar we’ve been talking lots about articles and nouns. In Spanish every noun has an article. Some articles are definite, like saying “the apple” in English. Other articles are indefinite, like saying “an apple”, or some apples” in English. This week we learned how to change these articles to talk about a singular noun or a plural noun.

  • Reading strategy: Making connections
  • Word wall word: soy (I am)
  • Read aloud: Chistes de animales
  • Vocabulary Words:
    • rápido (fast)
    • alto (tall)
    • saltar (jump)
    • chistoso (funny)
    • valiente (brave)
    • callado (quiet)
    • grande (big)
    • pequeño (small)
  • Phrase of the week: ¿Cómo está el tiempo?  (How is the weather?)
  • Letter of the week: Ss

Handwriting: We worked on our letter of the week- Ss. This was a little tricky for some of the kids! It’s an easy one to accidentally write backwards.

Book of Friends: We finished our book of friends project! They will be coming home soon! Thanks for your patience, sweet Clara, as you had to wait until the very end for your turn! 

Math: We acted out addition and subtraction problems in real life situations. For example, we had 3 friends with a bowl of soup, but only 2 spoons. The kids were challenged to use addition and subtraction to work through these every day situations. This might be a fun thing to try at home!

Writing Workshop: We continue to practice stretching out the sounds and writing all the sounds we hear. This week we also began a special system for organizing our writing! Every child has a folder with a spot for stories they’ve finished and stories they’re still working on.

Exploring God’s World: This week we talked about air. I blew up an inflatable globe and asked the kids, “What’s inside?” Then I “caught” air inside a plastic grocery bag and asked the same question. Next I blew up a balloon and asked the question again. Finally I asked the kids to breathe in and out with their hand in front of their mouths. We can’t see air, but we can feel it and hear it moving sometimes and we know it’s all around us. This reminded us of the Holy Spirit. God is with us always even though we can’t see or hear him directly all the time.


From the Immersion Coordinator

What is circumlocution, and why is it important for our immersion students?
Circumlocution is the process of describing or ‘talking around’ a word that you might not be able to remember or haven’t learned yet. Clearly, the ability to circumlocute is crucial for our immersion students! Everyday they are confronted with the need for more vocabulary. The ability to stay in the language while searching for a new word is a skill that we concretely teach from Kindergarten on up. The process of circumlocution also develops the child’s use of the target language and helps us keep the two languages distinctly separate. You can encourage this skill at home as well by playing games such as Taboo or a verbal form of charades (child needs to guess or describe a word without saying the actual word).

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