Weaving Residency

On Wednesday April 6th our class will participate in weaving their chosen item (brought from home) into the Banks Road Tapestry. Please remember that these items will become a permanent part of the Tapestry and the items will not be returned. However, students will get to see the items in the Tapestry every day at school! Unfortunately, items sent in after this date will not be accepted. Thank you and we all look forward to seeing the completed product!

Spelling Homework

This will be the last week that I assign any spelling homework. Instead of completing spelling homework, I would like for students to focus on their writing at home. Students should now be able to write at least 4-5 sentences on topic (minimum). Students should also be consistently spacing between words, using legible handwriting, spelling word wall words correctly, and applying correct capitalization and punctuation. In class we have been focusing on using transition words (first, next, second, then, last, etc.) and editing our own work (finding our own mistakes). Be sure to ask your child about the writing rubric they use to score their own writing! Also in class, we have been creating pre-writing plans prior to writing our stories. The students have really responded well to this. We will continue to focus on all of these areas in class.

On another note, please make sure that your child is reading at home every night for at least 10-15 minutes. Students should be focusing on retelling stories that they read. In class, we have been focusing on describing the main character from the beginning to the end of the story. This is still difficult for some of the students. Students should also be able to identify the setting (where and when), many events in sequential order, topic (what the story is mostly about), and key concepts (what are the most important ideas to remember). In addition, students must be able to make connections to every story that they read. Please continue to focus on all of these elements at home. Thank you!

Spring Carnival Basket

This year, our Banks Road Spring carnival will be on Friday, May 20th. PTA has asked all classrooms to prepare them based baskets to auction off at our carnival. Several of the first grade classes, including our class, have chosen to create a water games basket. If you are willing to contribute to our water games basket, please send it items as soon as possible. Suggested items include: water balloons, pool towels, blow up water pools/slides, sunscreen, beach towels, books for reading by the pool, and/or floatation devices. PTA plans to have all baskets completed by May 6th. To help them reach this goal, I am asking that all donations be sent in before we track out on Monday, April 25th. Thank you in advance for helping out with this project. You are very much appreciated!

Panda Cam

Thanks to Mrs. Pettaris we were able to watch a 4 month old panda bear and it's mother at the Atlanta zoo. The students were very excited and I told them I would share the website with you. The cam is only available M-F 10:00-5:00
http://www.zooatlanta.org/1212/panda_cam

We also viewed other zoo animal cams at the following address: http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam/

Seussville

FYI: We visited www.seussville.com today and the students loved it! Just thought I would share the website in case you had not seen it. The students also asked me to share it with you so that they could visit the website from home.

Another website for your child to visit: www.tumblebooks.com
Username: banksrd Password: books
I shared this site with you a couple of months ago but I wanted to remind you about it in case you had not had the opportunity to visit it. Students can listen to stories, play games, and take comprehension quizzes on this site.