Information and Reminders:

Wonderfully Made: Willem Haveman Nov.7-11 Andrew Pyle Nov.14-18
Please finish and send your child’s timeline the week before your child’s special week. During your child’s special week, it is a wonderful opportunity to have lunch with your child, bring in pets, and or share special talents your family members may have been blessed with. Just inform me ahead of time what is your plan.

November Birthday Celebrations:
Kayleigh Van Dyk Thursday, November 10

November 4: Grandparents’ Day No hot lunch

November 9 & 10: No PM busing or hot lunch

November 10: Picture Retake

November 11: No AM/PM Busing or Hot Lunch

1st-4th Grade Concert: Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 7pm at Community Reformed Church
1st to 4th Mandarin students are going to sing How Great Thou Art at concert, you can help your kids to practice this song at home by going to my blog. The song is under Worship Songs.

First Grade Field Trip: Grand Rapids Children’s Museum Tuesday, Nov. 22 Students are not going to have time for hot lunch, please prepare a sack lunch for your child. Chaperons please come at 11:55am, we will leave school at 12:00pm. Thank you to Kristi Van Dyk, Dana Moeller, Cara Wickstra and Erin Harris for driving the field trip! Please bring the boosters you have.

Classroom Helpers: Thank you for those who helped with me. I would like more help for the coming months. New dates have been added, you can find the sign up here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LYJ2G_uUq5_8k06QON-6Z7qmLh57zftjz64P_i-pESM/edit

Curriculum
Language Arts
-Reading Strategy:
Fluency-Use your voice to sound like the character(feelings and tone), pay attention to quotation marks. Sound like a storyteller when the character stops talking.

-Writers’ Workshop: Students are busy with publishing their writing. They hope to get it done before Grandparents Day.

Math
-First Grade: We will relate addition with subtraction. Each equation can be written into four different equations. We will also talk about vertical form of equation.

-Second Grade:We will take unit 1 assessment this week and start learning more about place value, numbers to 200, and ways to represent numbers using base ten blocks, number names, expanded forms, etc.

Social Studies
We will continue talking about human and physical characteristics of places as well as ways in which people modify and adapt to the environment.

Science
-First Grade: We will start a new unit called Sorting Things Out while we are waiting for the winter and learn about weathers in winter. In the new unit, students are going to sort things into categories. We will learn words to describe the property of things as well as states of matter. In our first lesson, students are going to use senses to sort common objects based on similarities.

-Second Grade:We will start our second science unit this week – Earth and Me, which is tied to the Terracyling Project and focusses on using resources wisely. We will start by learning different kinds of rocks and think about what rocks really are. **Students will need to bring a rock (or two) from home for class on Thursday.  Thanks!

Bible
We will talk about Joseph’s time in Egypt. Joseph the slave, Joseph the prisoner and Pharaoh’s dreams.

Information and Reminders:

Wonderfully Made: Aiden Douma Oct.24-28 Willem Haveman Nov.7-11
Please finish and send your child’s timeline the week before your child’s special week. During your child’s special week, it is a wonderful opportunity to have lunch with your child, bring in pets, and or share special talents your family members may have been blessed with. Just inform me ahead of time what is your plan.

October Birthday Celebrations:
Andres Duran Wednesday, October 19
Mike Moeller Thursday, October 27

November Birthday Celebrations:
Kayleigh Van Dyk Thursday, November 10

• Are you new to immersion education? 
• Have you watched your older children advance through the immersion program but have questions about this approach to education? 
• Are you wondering what is expected of you as an immersion parent? 
You are invited to learn more about immersion education and meet the coordinator of the language immersion programs. This will be an informal round table discussion time for parents to learn and ask questions about immersion education. Please consider reserving one of the following times to attend: October 24 at 9:00am, October 24 at 7:00 pm We will meet in the media center classroom (the back corner of the library). 

1st-4th Grade Concert: Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 7pm at Community Reformed Church
1st to 4th Mandarin students are going to sing How Great Thou Art at concert, you can help your kids to practice this song at home by going to my blog. The song is under Worship Songs.

November 4: Grandparents’ Day

November 9 & 10: No PM busing or hot lunch

November 10: Picture Retake

November 11: No AM/PM Busing or Hot Lunch

Curriculum
Language Arts
-Reading Strategy:
Comprehension—Retell the important parts of a story. This week we will focus on summarizing what’s most essential. The summary should include enough information to make sense to someone who hasn’t read the story before. At the same time, instead of telling details, students are going to say it by using simple sentences. We are going to choose five most important events in a story, and tell it across our five fingers.

-Writers’ Workshop: We will talk about editing. Most students have finished their revision. We will talk about editing especially punctuations. We hope to publish our writing early next week.

Math
-First Grade: We will talk about subtraction. We will learn how to both use pictures and equations to represent subtraction.

-Second Grade:We will continue to work on solving problems with not enough, extra, or hidden information. We will also learn how to solve more complex story problems that involve comparison, two-steps, and mixed word.

Social Studies
For next two weeks, we will talk about human and physical characteristics of places as well as ways in which people modify and adapt to the environment.

Science
-First Grade: We will start a new unit called Sorting Things Out while we are waiting for the winter and learn about weathers in winter. In the new unit, students are going to sort things into categories. We will learn words to describe the property of things as well as states of matter. In our first lesson, students are going to use senses to sort common objects based on similarities.

-Second Grade:We will complete our Organisms have Character unit, take a short assessment about things that we have learned, and move on to the next unit – Earth and Me. We will also start to talk more about our Teracycle PBL.
Bible
We will talk about Jacob escapes from Laban; Jacob’s homecoming and unit review. Then we will start Joseph’s story. This week we will talk about Joseph’s dream and Joseph is sold.

Dear parents,
I am sending this newsletter covering the next two weeks. Because the week of Oct.17 is a short week, so we are not going to learn new characters. We will use the time to review and assess. Therefore, we will not have Chinese homework for the week of Oct. 17-19, but English homework is as usual. Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Information and Reminders:

Wonderfully Made: Lily Delcalzo Oct. 10-14 Aiden Douma Oct.24-28
Please finish and send your child’s timeline the week before your child’s special week. During your child’s special week, it is a wonderful opportunity to have lunch with your child, bring in pets, and or share special talents your family members may have been blessed with. Just inform me ahead of time what is your plan.

No School Oct.20-21 CEA conferences for teachers

October Birthday Celebrations:
Andres Duran Wednesday, October 19
Mike Moeller Thursday, October 27

• Are you new to immersion education? 
• Have you watched your older children advance through the immersion program but have questions about this approach to education? 
• Are you wondering what is expected of you as an immersion parent? 
You are invited to learn more about immersion education and meet the coordinator of the language immersion programs, Jodi Pierce. This will be an informal round table discussion time for parents to learn and ask questions about immersion education. More information will come but for now please consider reserving one of the following times to attend: October 24 at 9:00am, October 24 at 7:00 pm 

Curriculum
Language Arts
-Reading Strategy:
Accuracy-Check the picture for help: When there is a tricky word, there’s often help in the picture. We can check the picture and think, “What’s happening in the picture? What word would make sense?”
Trade a word: When we do not know a word, we can put a word there that makes sense.

-Writers’ Workshop: We will talk about revision. Each student has some of their ideas written into stories. We are going to make them better for an audience. Students will practice rereading their works and either cross out unnecessary words or add words to make the writing more clear.

Math
-First Grade: We will talk about addition strategies. One important strategy of solving addition problems is counting on. Students will learn how to count on from the greater number to solve addition problems.

-Second Grade:We will continue to learn about the comparison bar and how to use it to solve comparison word problems. We will also learn how to solve problems with not enough, extra, or hidden information.

Social Studies
We will talk about two different locations: absolute location and relative location. Students will explore the concept of an address as an absolute location as well as personal directions as relative location.

Science
-First Grade: Last week we constructed a rain gauge, we hope to use it collect data for rainfall if it rains in the next two weeks. we will also talk about weather in the fall.

-Second Grade:We will learn about plants classifications through comparing physical characteristics of plants this week. 

Bible
We will talk about Jacob and the birthright; Jacob and the blessing; Jacob on the run; Jacob in Paddan Aram;

Information and Reminders:

Picture Day: Monday, Oct. 3 11:30am Please remember to bring the order in tomorrow if you have not done so.

Hot lunch and PM bussing will not be offered Friday, October 7

Bookworm book orders is due on Wednesday, October 5

Wonderfully Made: Please finish and send your child’s timeline the week before your child’s special week. During your child’s special week, it is a wonderful opportunity to have lunch with your child, bring in pets, and or share special talents your family members may have been blessed with. Just inform me ahead of time what is your plan. Ben Brower Oct. 3-7 Lily Delcalzo Oct. 10-14

Book it: ZCS is participating in the Pizza Hut reading program again this year. If your child fills out his/her sheet for the month, he/she will earn a free personal pan pizza! The first one for October will be sent home tomorrow. Please return them back to school at the end of each month. Participation is optional of course but reading each day is encouraged.

Holland Christian High School passed this announcement on to us in case any of our Mandarin immersion families might be interested: Those interested in hosting an international student and current host families-On Thursday, October 13, at 7pm in the Holland Christian High School Media Center, Andy and Josie Wen will be speaking about the Chinese culture and the Chinese family.  Andy and Josie support Holland Christian’s international program by having connections with our international student’s natural parents.  They are currently based in Hong Kong and have worked closely with many Chinese families and US Christian schools for student placement.  Andy received his Ph.D in Economics from Penn Sate and MA in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary.  After that they moved back to Hong Kong and raised their two daughters.  They will be sharing the valuable insights they’ve gained regarding Chinese parents and Chinese student’s adjustments to the American school environment and American host families.  Please RSVP to Karen DeRoo at kderoo@hollandchristian.org if you plan on attending.

October Birthday Celebrations:
Andres Duran Wednesday, October 19
Mike Moeller Thursday, October 27

Curriculum
Language Arts
-Reading Strategy:
Accuracy-cross checking: when we read books, we always ask ourselves the questions-Does it look right? Sound right? Make sense? We want to make sure we read the correct meaning.

-Writers’ Workshop: This week we will talk about how to zoom in a small moment and write details. We will use story hand to help us plan. Students will learn that we need to use storyteller’s voice, showing not telling.

Math
-First Grade: We will start a unit about addition and subtraction strategies. This week, we will learn how to use pictures and equations to represent addition. Then we will create addition story problems.

-Second Grade:We will continue to learn how to solve various kinds of word problems: ‘add to’ (+) and ‘take from’ (-), put together and take apart, compare, and mixed.  (with Li Laoshi)

Social Studies
We will explore maps and globes. We will also distinguish between landmasses and bodies of water using maps and globes.

Science
-First Grade: This week we will construct a rain gauge to collect data for rainfall.

-Second Grade:We will continue to talk about the function of flower, we will look at the relationship between flower and fruit, and we will also discuss the importance of flower, fruit, and seed to the survival of plants. (with Li Laoshi)

Bible
We will talk about Sodom and Gomorrah; Isaac’s birth and Ishmael’s response. Then we will start learning about Isaac and Jacob. This week we will talk about a wife for Isaac.