So Proud of All of You!!

I hope you are all enjoying your 3 day weekend. So nice to be with friends and family and get caught up. The BEST part of the weekend was when I went to work at school and had such a POSITIVE note from the substitute on Friday. She said the kids did a fantastic job, were so helpful, and caring towards one another. Way to go Team Hankins in displaying true character. Like I said, "True character shines when I am not watching". Thank you, parents for having that talk with them on Thursday night. I so appreciate you. Talk to your child about how proud I am of them and write "proud" in the planner for free money at check in. This week is going to be another busy week. We are starting our new Reading series titled: "Lead 21". This is going to be a big switch for me as I am so used to teaching skills & strategies through Read-a-Louds, and novels in Book Clubs. Some of it will be done whole group and some of it done in small groups at their tested level. It is a lot of non-fiction which I love and so do the kids. It has some spelling & Language, but I am still going to add the old spelling and language because I know it has worked and I love the skills that go with it. I wanted to incorporate book clubs too with a novel, but not sure we can do it all with our 90 min. time frame. Will just work on it slowly and see how it all fits together. Some students will be going to Read 180 at this time as a Reading intervention so they will not be in the regular classroom for this block of time. Your child should receive a letter tomorrow explaining the program a bit to you. In Science this week, we are going to start our weather unit by studying hurricanes which is a great place to start as they are quite prevalent right now in the Atlantic. In Social Studies, we continue to work on map skills and adding hemispheres, equator, prime meridian, latitude, and longitude this week. In Math, we continue to work on place value adding comparing & ordering numbers along with rounding this week. I also add a little bit of geometry each day along with adding & subtracting larger numbers. New spelling words will come home on Tuesday for Unit 2. If you can't read or misplace your child's spelling list throughout the week, I do post them on the side of the blog under spelling list. I was so impressed with last weeks test. They all did fantastic for the first go at it. Character Education: We started character warriors last week with fairness and will continue this week with responsibility. We are also starting Rusty's regular SchoolTools program with feelings, manner motto, bully bit, and daily toolbox question. This is the lead in for our morning meetings where we share feelings and talk about the show's components. Book orders are going home on Tuesday. They are due back on September 12th. You can either order via the paper book order and return to me or order on-line. This is a very simple way to do it plus we get a free classroom book for every order purchased on-line. I have the link attached right below. Just remember the classroom code as that is used all year for on-line orders. If you do paper orders and write a check, make them out to Scholastic Books. Thank you. https://orders.scholastic.com/GZN8L Bitterroot Bucks: Our money system is going very well. This week students will have a chance to earn $20/day if they do not lose a ticket that day. Team Building activity this week will be kickball which is a $100 buy in. Also, there will be a surprise buy in if they choose to. Just a reminder that they will need money for 3 upcoming field trips in October. Wow-that is going to be a busy month. I hope you have a great rest of your weekend and I look forward to a fabulous week.