All Stars!

The teachers and staff of Memorial School and Clough definitely didn't look like ROCK STARS when we went up against the Wizards but uniting to raise money that will help to provide the best possible education for our students made us all look like winners!

My husband and I were blessed to be able to attend game 1 of the World Series at Fenway! This last minute suprise made for a magical night in Boston with a big win for our Sox.

I've been thinking a lot about all-stars this week.  We had an amazing encounter with the Harlem Wizards this past Sunday.  They have mind numbing ball handling skills and can dunk the ball like nobody's business.  I had the good fortune of attending game 1 of the World Series at Fenway on Wednesday night.  Those bearded wonders seem to be taking turns being MVP from night to night.  But truly, the all-stars I'm most taken with are your students! 

We're quickly approaching the end of October and they are surpassing all of my expectations.  We recently started a new math unit.  We're working with much larger numbers and rather than using their number sense to navigate around the hundreds chart they're navigating around the thousands chart.  Soon, we'll begin a class collection with the goal of making our way to a thousand.  For a few years now the third grade team has challenged each class to collect a THOUSAND Box Tops.  I can think of no better way to build a collection while helping to bring cultural arts etc. to the students at Clough.  Please support your students in the following ways:

1. Clip those Box Tops!
2. Call relatives to ask them to clip Box Tops too.  I know that my parents who live in Florida are more than willing to clip the Box Tops for my children's school and my kids LOVE getting them in the mail!
3. Ask your child about our collection.  Pose questions like: "I hear you have 342 box tops.  How many groups of ten can you make with 342 Box Tops?  How many Box Tops do you need to get to four hundred?  How far away are you from your goal of 1,ooo?" Also, ask how we're organizing our collection at school.  See if your child can describe what we're doing and see if he or she can tell you why it makes sense to bundle the Box Tops like we do.  As you can see, collecting these Box Tops will certainly help to build students' number sense.

We had an enormously successful book fair. While I have no idea how much money the PTO made I can tell you that your children picked Good Fit Books.  Picking Good Fit Books is a skill we work on during our literacy block.  Students are taught to select books that they have a purpose to read, that they're interested in, that they can understand and that are books where they can read most of the words.  When students faithfully read these kinds of books they are able to become better readers.  Our students are working hard to fill their classroom book boxes with Good Fit Books that represent different genres like non-fiction, traditional literature and poetry.  They are quickly becoming interested in a wide variety of reading materials.  My goal for next week is to snap a few pictures during the Daily 5 and put together an Animoto for you to view.  I know you'll enjoy seeing the children engaged in these worthwhile reading, writing and vocabulary building tasks.

We continue to study Rocks and Minerals in Science and we have begun our unit on the Wampanoags.  These literature-rich units require students to use the skills learned in the Daily Five and CAFE to conduct research and communicate their understanding. We'll be very excited to share final projects with you.

My schedule for the November conferences is nearly set.  Please contact me if you have yet to schedule a conference as meeting with every family is important to me.

Finally, we'll be having a little Halloween party on Thursday.  I'll share one of my favorite Halloween stories, we'll make a little craft, and have a little snack.  If time allows, we'll play a round or two of Halloween Bingo.  Drop me a quick email if you'd like to come in and lend a hand.  We'd love to have a crafty parent or two to help us out.

Thanks for your continued support of all that we do in the classroom.  Your extra efforts are the reason why I get to coach the ALL-STAR TEAM!

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