Dear Parents and Friends,

Grandview hosted a delightful evening for our student authors and artists.

The evening began in the cafeteria where families and the Grandview staff enjoyed a yummy dinner -- pizza, salad, cookies. After dinner, the families enjoyed displays of student artwork and published writing. Classroom teachers met parents in the back gym where student work was displayed. Art teacher, Mrs. Geertz, spoke with parents as they viewed their children's art. Families participated in an artwork scavenger hunt. I scanned and recorded sample books for each grade level. Click to Enjoy Students Reading Their Books!

Kindergarten & First Grades

Harry is the adorable dog in the books: Harry the Dirty Dog Project Organizer No More Roses for Harry Project Organizer. The children identified the main elements of these two fiction stories. We worked first on the Smart Board and then the children worked on the notebook computers in their own copies of the Project Organizers.

Dictionary Study: After talking about how people use dictionaries, we looked at several different examples. The simplest was the one I created to support interactive lessons on the Smart Board - Click Here and ask your child to show you the "Guide Words" and have her explain how they are used. Click Here to play some alphabetical order games with your children.

Second Grade

The second graders enjoyed meeting the fictional character Englebert Sneem in the book Englebert Sneem and the Dream Vacuum Machine.

Click Here to take a look at our Project Organizer then Click Here to read some of your children's dreams. I've included a picture of our bulletin board inspired by Englebert's dungeon where he stores children's dreams in flagons.

Research

We read several books about spiders and continued our work on note taking and categorizing information in our Spider Research Project Organizer. We will add our research information to our Research Big Book. By June our big book will include our work on Ladybugs, Cheetahs, and Spiders and provide a great resource when we begin our new Research Big Book in the fall of 2009. Because I see all of your children each year, I have a wonderful opportunity to help them make connections and build on the work we do in the library from Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Third Grade

	The 3rd graders completed their "Sharing My Topic" paragraphs which addressed the following: What makes this topic interesting? What will you teach others? What are your opinions about this topic? What are you trying to prove?
Research Project Organizer

"I selected this topic because I love tigers. Something interesting about tigers is their pattern of orange, black, and white. I will teach others that tigers are a member of the cat family. The tiger is the biggest cat in the world. If a tiger attacks you, you will die. My opinions about tigers are that they are very cool. I love the pattern on their fur. Tigers are the best. I am trying to prove that they are very pretty but very, very deadly. Tigers are amazing!" (Nichole)

"I chose beavers because I think beavers are interesting animals. A beaver can stay underwater for about fifteen minutes because its heart slows down and its body doesn't work as fast. They are cool and weird at the same time. I will teach you about their habitat and about what they do. My opinion is that beavers are very cool animals, for example: the beaver can make its teeth sharper just by chewing wood. My other opinion is that they chew way too much wood. They really are interesting little creatures but you might not see many beavers because they mostly live in Canada." (Louis)

Taking Notes

The children are now taking notes to answer five "essential" research questions about their topics. We worked on writing questions which were not so simple that they could be answered in one sentence or so broad that they could not be answered in a short research paper.

Citations

We learned about the importance of using a standard format to give credit to our research sources. We practiced writing citations for a book, a magazine and a web site as a whole class activity. Then, each student wrote a citation for a book he was using in his research.

It's hard to believe that the end of the year is near. Until next month, remember, don't panic, be happy. Enjoy the simple things in life and hug your children.

Warmly,
Mrs. Chauncey