For the Week of October 29th

Chess Club

There are no chess clubs this week due to parent-teacher conferences.

Paper Recycling

Did you know that you can help our district earn money by recycling paper here at school?  You can bring in any paper (no cardboard please) to the green and yellow bin marked Paper Retriever located in Lakeview's parking lot to be recycled.  The more paper we collect, the more money we can earn.  The provider of the bin uses the paper to make newsprint, which is then sold to other companies.  That is how we are paid to recycle paper.  Than you for your help (and for helping the environment at the same time!)

For the Week of Oct. 22nd

Early Dismissal

Thursday, October 25th is early dismissal. Your children will be dismissed at 11:00 AM

Chess Club

Tuesday's chess club will meet this week. Thursday is early dismissal day so chess club will not meet that day. Last week we learned about pawn promotion. This week we will begin learning about castling.

Math

In math small groups we have been working on number sense. We are trying to give the students a "feel" for our base 10 number system. One way that you can help your student is to count together. Count up and count down. Count by 2's, 5's and 10's. Count money.

Reading

One of the strategies we are working on in reading small groups is summarizing. At the dinner table, when there is a lull in the conversation, ask your child to summarize what they read that day in reading class. You can also ask them to summarize something that they are reading at home. Who knows, it might lead to an interesting discussion.

For the Week of October 16th

Chess Club

Both Tuesday's and Thursday's chess clubs are meeting this week. It can be difficult to retrain  our thinking about winning when in many games the winner is the one who takes the last piece or a certain piece. We have been working on understanding that to win in chess, you must first put your opponent's king in "check" and your opponent must not be able to get out of that check. Checkmate! We have been learning that there are three ways to get out of check. The first way is to move the king to a safe spot. The second way is to put one of your pieces in the way of the check. The third way is to take the piece that is putting you in check.

Making Movies in Your Mind as You Read

One strategy that we teach children to use when reading a story is to make a movie of that story in their mind as they are reading. They are to pretend that they are filming the movie. What are they picturing? What are the characters doing and what are they saying? It helps if they stop from time-to-time to replay the movie in their mind (summarize) to make sure that they were thinking while they were reading. If you are careful when doing this, it is amazing how many details from the story you can remember.

For the Week of October 8th

Chess Club

Both Tuesday's and Thursday's chess clubs meet this week. Please make sure that you pick your child up by 3:30 PM in the parking lot by the 3rd grade door. Sometimes I have appointments at 4:00 PM and am not able to make it to those appointments on time if I have to wait for a student to be picked up. Thank you for your cooperation.

Keyboarding

Students are using computer technology more and more in the classrooms. They already take the MAP test, here at school, on a computer. In a couple of years, the state standardized tests will be administered on the computer. Your child will be required to write for a variety of reasons using the computer. The reason I am pointing this out is that most children use the hunt and peck method for keyboarding. It is laborious and time consuming. I would encourage you to find a keyboarding tutoring program and have your child work on it at home. There are many out there that seem more like video games and yet can help your child to learn to keyboard much more quickly and efficiently without having to look at the keys. This might even be a fun holiday present for them.

Math Games

In our small math groups we have been practicing skip counting and counting numbers between 100 and 999. If you have a little time in the car or between doing other things, count for fun. Count by 2's, 5's, 10's, 25's and 50's.