Goodbye 2007, Hello 2008!

Howdy!

Well, we sure have had fun kicking off the new year here in Letter Land! It has actually been a rather relaxing and laid-back week. We still have one week left in the second nine week grading period and a couple more assessments, so we didn't start a new unit of study as far as Science or Social Studies goes. We did however, review quite a bit for our upcoming Math Benchmark and this weeks Reading Benchmark. We also focused on New Years and set some resolutions for the classroom. We have a new reward system for "Star Character" traits. Students will earn stickers for extraordinary acts of kindness and honorable character. Once five stickers are collected, the children visit the treasure box. Once 20 are collected, they get to eat lunch with Miss Urban!


We did do A LOT of reading too to prepare for the benchmark. I am SOOO happy to report that our WHOLE CLASS passed the reading assessment with flying colors! I am ecstatic about our score!! WAY TO GO KIDS! Parents thanks so much for helping prepare your children. They did Awesome.
We started a new unit for writing that is called 6+ Writing Traits. The students are learning 6 traits of good writing: Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions. I introduced to them last year, so they have a little background already, but now they will understand it much more as it helps strengthen their writing. We also got two new digraphs for our Phonics Dance: 'aw' and 'au'.
Now, with the exception of the Math benchmark next Tuesday, we are finished with assessments for now, woohoo! Starting on Monday, we are back to our normal schedule and will have some really neat things to learn. We will dig deeper into our reading and the most exciting new yet...we get to start using our brand new SCIENCE LAB! That's right, starting Monday we will be in the Science lab for two weeks learning all sorts of fun things about Earth. We will learning about the Earth from the inside-out. The kids are excited!

We also had a surprise visit from Jerheme on Thursday. He and Emily were on their way to Austin and thought they would stop in and say hello. He brought us treats, read us books, and showed us how important it is to get ready for work (his work) and showed us his stretches! It was quite entertaining! Scroll down to see the neat picture show.

That's it for now, have a wonderful weekend!!!
Love, Miss Urban