18
Jan
2019

Newsletter 16: Week of January 20

categories: Uncategorized

Weekly Highlights

Thursday morning was a special moment for our class. Maestra Haak and I got to sit with the kids and explain that this spring I will spend some time at home taking care of the new baby while she fills my spot at school and taking care of all of them. Then I got to read with each of your children individually. I could see the kids were comfortable with Maestra Haak, especially with Maestra Katie still there, and they trusted her. I’m so proud of the growth I saw as I read with your kids. I’m excited about this spring and I’m confident God has this transition in His hands! Time is going so fast and I’m holding close to the last months with your children!

Important Dates

  • January 21: No School (Teacher PD Day)
  • January 29: For the Kidz Field Trip- Thank you drivers! Please send along a booster seat if you are able (if your child doesn’t ride the bus). Children should dress in comfortable clothes. We will be moving a lot!
  • February 13: 100th Day of School (see reminders section)
  • February 14: Valentine’s Day (see reminders section)
  • February 15 & 18: No School (Winter Break)
  • March 31: Baby Izenbaard’s Due Date

Reminders

100 Day: Zero the Hero (secretly Mr. McAboy) will be visiting our school to help us celebrate 100 days of learning! We will not have a  class party, but will be doing a few fun literacy and math activities. God has been so good these 100 days!

Valentines Day: I always look forward to celebrating this special day of love and friendship together. We will have a small class celebration where we’ll participate in a few different centers. One center will be passing out valentines. If your family chooses to do valentines, please make sure there are enough for everyone- 23 students- and that your child fills out only the “From____” section. Valentines may be something very simple and small!

Curriculum

Bible: This week we learned about the day Jesus invited the children to come to him and blessed them. It was exciting to discover our Bible verse in the context of our story! The verse is below. We also learned about Jesus and Nicodemus.

Matthew 19:14 But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

Mateo 19:14 Pero Jesus dijo, “Dejad a los niños venir a mí y no se los impidais. Porque de los tales es el reino de los cielos.”

I don’t have a separate video for this verse, but we are learning this song by Steve Green. The lyrics are from our Bible verse. Please click here to share the song with your child. (Please be aware of unpredictable ads that may play before the song.)

Literacy: In grammar we continued to talk about the order of adjectives. We quickly discovered that, contrary to English, in Spanish the adjective comes after the noun.

  • Reading strategy: Questioning
  • Read aloud: Rebeca
  • Vocabulary words
    • la maceta (flower pot)
    • contento/a (happy)
    • la paleta (sucker)
    • arrullar (to lull to sleep)
    • regar (to water)
    • la carreta (cart)
    • chupar (to suck)
    • la patineta (scooter, skateboard)
  • Word wall word: bien (good)
  • Phrase of the week: Estoy emocionado/a. (I’m excited.)
  • Letter of the week: Bb

Math: This week we looked closely at what happens when we subtract 1 from a number. We learned that numbers get smaller and the difference is the next number we say when we count backward by 1s. We also did some review and began our test for this unit.

Writing Workshop: We wrote our first pattern book as a class! Each student created a page with the pattern “Yo veo” and the theme colors to make our class book.

Exploring God’s World: We learned all about gravity this week! With a partner kids dropped a feather and a ball while standing on top of a chair. We discovered things fall down because of gravity!

Up in Lights: Peyton was Up in Lights this week! Her two brothers and her parents came to visit our class. Peyton’s favorite toy is her Shopkins and she loves the color pink and flamingos. Peyton, we’re so glad you’re in our class and we love you so much! God made you so special and with Him you’re going to do amazing things!

From the Immersion Program Director, Jodi Pierce

Do students in immersion classrooms just need to learn twice as much as those children in an English classroom? In immersion education, we often will refer to transferable and non-transferable skills. These terms refer to academic skills that either naturally transfer from one language to the next or that do not naturally transfer between languages. Immersion education works because the vast majority of what our children learn falls into the transferable skill category! Research definitively defends the fact that children are able to take the learning in one language and apply it to the next. However, as immersion teachers, we are aware that not everything transfers naturally; these non-transferable skills (such as a silent ‘e’ at the end of an English word, the rule that we always capitalize the letter ‘I’, etc.) are the focus of our linguistics skills taught during our English instruction time (social studies in 3rd-5th grade). 

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