It was great seeing and meeting all of you (who were able to make it) last night! I just wanted to share with you a "found" poem that I created using lines from the poems your children wrote in the first weeks of school. So... here is our class "I come from..." poem:

I come from the cold sunny days of santa cruz
I come from a house by the sea
A little yellow house on a cliff by the sea
I come from my bed
The smell of bacon the yummy sausage and eggs
Pancakes and french toast for breakfast
The good food my parents make

I come from the love and music of my dad’s guitar
the ringing of music in my ears
I come from the bright light that shines in the day
the joy of watching flowers grow
I come from laughter and happiness
I come from the nature that gives me power

I remember the ocean
the sound of the waves on the beach that I’m running past,
making footprints in the sand
I like being at the ocean
watching the water shimmer in the moonlight
Everything is silent except for the soft whisper
I come from a world of dreams where life is made

I come from the clouds
from the dark sky... from the howl... from the moon

I come from the peace
I come from fun


I come from my loving family who has made so many sacrifices for me
I am from my family’s heart
the love of my family strengthens me
it powers me

I love our community, our animals and our people
I am the leaf of a flower
the beat of a drum
I am proud of myself
I am the mountains
I am the sun
I am the world
you and i are a lot alike
it doesn’t matter where you are
your memories are where you come from
Happy so happy the life of mine

Greetings Families,

I am looking forward to seeing you all at Back to School Night. It is this Thursday, September 16th at 6:10 in my class, Room 13!

September 7, 2010

Greetings Room 13 Families!

Hopefully you all enjoyed the long weekend. Again, many thank yous for all of your generous donations to our class!!!

Please check in with your students nightly about their homework; it should be recorded daily on their log. This seems to be a problem for many students, as I am getting blank logs or no longs at all on Fridays. Vocab/Spelling work will always be described on the back of the log (please help make sure your child is reading the directions). Vocab/Spelling work is always due on Friday with the log. There will almost always be nightly math homework (this should be kept in student's math folders. There are also assignment logs for math that should be getting filled in during class time. If your child is able to finish their math homework in class, math facts in a flash or other fact practice should be done (multiplication and division).

We began talking about the National Park Assignment today in class. Your child has been assigned their National Park. There are some great links on my blog (National Geographic's site is especially picturesque). This assignment will be due on Sept. 17th. We will be getting research started at school and your child will bring home the detailed project description with grading rubric on Thursday.

A quick run down of some areas of study in the first month of school:
Math: factor trees, prime factorization, exponents, equivalent fractions (coming soon)
Language Arts/Science: Our First theme for Language Arts is "Natures Fury" in which we will be reading realistic fiction and non-fiction text, we will also be exploring figurative language and connecting this to our study of weather in science.
Social Studies: Native Americans and geography skills. Around the world (artistic expressions of famous places around the world).

:) Ms. Sara