Newsletter 11.11.16

Good Afternoon,

A few quick notes for you from the Chameleon class. 

Winter has truly set in this week, most of the days we have seen grey clouds and a fair amount of rain. The Chameleons, however, are keeping spirits high and getting on with their class work. 

Throughout the week I have been finishing up meeting with pupils regarding their first English check in. I was incredibly impressed by most pupils work. You should have been shown the completed rubric with a grade on it, this is not their final grade for the project as it will be made up of 2 other grades from later check ins. As well as this we have a done another round of short reading assessments and I have seen improvements in almost everyone. This tremendous work just shows how well your children are doing in the readers and writers workshop.

In math I gave out the new pathway which is centered completely around multiplication. We focus on a single method in the mini-lessons, however if pupils are struggling with this I often suggest a different approach they could try. At the start of each session we have be doing a 5 minute multiplication challenge. Pupils were given a 10 x 10 multiplication grid at the start of the week; they then had 5 minutes to completely fill it out. Pupils have now moved on to larger grids involving all tables up to the 12 times table!

Starting on Monday 14^th November and running to Thursday 24^th November I will be holding parent conferences. These are for us to meet and discuss your child’s development so far throughout the year; it is also an excellent opportunity for you to see the work your child is doing in class and to ask any questions. Below is a link to a Doodle Event, within this you are able to schedule a time for us to meet.

Most parents have already signed up to a time slot, thank you for doing this so quickly. Each meeting will aim to last for about 15 minutes. If there is anything in particular that you would like to discuss please let me know in an email ahead of time. Please also let me know if you would like me to organize another member of staff to be there to translate as my German may not be up to par.

http://doodle.com/poll/ngnd2e8rrqam36hk

Important Dates:

-          Monday 14^th November to Thursday 24^th November Parent Teacher Interviews being held.

-          22^nd November School Photographer

-          28^th – 29^th November the Usborne book fair will be taking place in the Library. More information regarding this to follow.

Here is an overview of the areas of study we will focus on throughout the first week back:

English:

Pupils are now well on their way with revising their chosen pieces, from what I have seen they are doing a wonderful job at this and using a range of lenses to help them spot how they could improve their work. This will continue next week.

I will be giving out a new rubric next week which will be connected to the next check in. This will be discussed in class and it might be good for you to ask your child about this rubric, this will help them to understand what they need to do further.  

Math:

Pupils will be continuing to work on their multiplication pathway, for the second week of this I will be focusing my mini-lessons on word problems that involve multiplication. We will discuss the procedure of how to solve word problems in general and then look at how we can tell that these are multiplication problems.

Science:

In science this week we will be finishing up our preloading lessons by looking at the seasons, how they occur and what they look like in different places around the world as well as filtering in our humanities topic by discussing how different countries handle some tricky global issues.

Humanities:

We will continue to look at different perspectives in class. This is something that pupils seemed to have enjoyed very much this week. They often bring up interesting current topics to talk about and these fit brilliantly with this specific humanities topic.

German:

Liebe Eltern der Chamäleon-Klasse,

im Englischunterricht arbeiten die Schüler mit dem Writer's Workshop. Dieses Konzept greifen wir nun auch im Deutschunterricht auf und starten damit in der kommenden Woche. In den nächsten fünf Wochen sollen die Schüler eine Reizwortgeschichte verfassen. Abgabetermin für die Geschichte ist der 16. Dezember 2016. Die Note ersetzt die 2. Klassenarbeit. Weitere Informationen zum Ablauf und der Bewertung entnehmen Sie bitte dem Anhang.

Um eine Geschichte anschaulich zu erzählen, benötigt man einen abwechslungsreichen Wortschatz. Deshalb haben wir uns in dieser Woche mit dem Wortfeld sagen  beschäftigt. Zudem haben wir die Regeln der wörtlichen Rede eingeübt, um die Erzählungen lebendig gestalten zu können.

Die Lernwörter der Woche waren Wörter mit y/chs (s. Anhang). Das nächste Lernwörterdiktat findet in der Woche vom 21.-25. November statt. Den genauen Termin erhalten Sie im nächsten Newsletter. Zur Bewertung: Im Lernwörterdiktat werden alle Rechtschreibfehler gezählt, also auch bei Wörtern, die nicht zu den Lernwörter gehörten. Dass Schüler zu Beginn des Schuljahres noch viele Fehler machen, ist völlig normal. Der Durchschnitt der Summe der Diktate fließt zu einem kleinen Teil in die mündliche Note mit ein. Viel wichtiger ist, dass eine Steigerung der Rechtschreibleistung während des Schuljahres erkennbar ist. Eine Übersicht mit dem Fehlerschritt erhalten Sie nächste Woche.

Ich wünsche Ihnen ein erholsames Wochenende!

Herzliche Grüße

Agnes Fojcik

Have a wonderful weekend.

Sincerely,

Mario Civico and the entire Chameleon team.