Back to School Night

Just a friendly reminder that Back to School Night is tomorrow night, 10/1 at 8 PM. We will need you all to sign up for different events we have during the school year. If you could plan to arrive around 7:45 to take care of that business that would be greatly appreciated.

Book Wink

Here is a link to a website that has some really great reading lists for students in grades 3-8, it is called BOOKWINK. There are video book chats hosted by former librarian Sonja Cole. Each book talk is a 3-minute video for kids in grades 3-8. The Web site also includes lists of read-alikes for the books she talks about.

Check it out, I highly recommend taking a look.

Book Seer

Check out this link to The Book Seer. Students can go to this site and type in the information of a book they have read, as well as the author. The "Book Seer" will then suggest some books for them to read. It's pretty cool. I have added it to our Angel page, so the class will have easy access to the link.

Online Flashcard Maker

Here is a little link I found today to make flashcards online and print them at home. It is from Flashcard Exchange and could be a great tool for your kids to help them study, now and in the future. Enjoy!

Stanford Testing

Next week we will begin our Stanford testing all week. Today we took a practice test, which was very similar to the test the students will take part in next week. Please make sure your child is well rested and eats a good breakfast before they come to school next week. If eating before school is not really possible feel free to send in some sort of breakfast for them to eat before they begin the test (poptart, muffin, bagel, etc...).

The schedule for the test is below. Have a great weekend!


Monday: Word Study and Vocabulary (Morning session)
Listening (afternoon session)
Tuesday: Reading Comprehension and Spelling
Wednesday: Language
Thursday: Math Problem Solving
Friday: Math Procedures

PTA Grant Approved

This summer I wrote a grant for the TJ PTA attempting to get an iPod Touch for our classroom. The PTA has informed me that the grant has been approved and the iTouch should be arriving sometime next week. A HUGE THANK YOU to the PTA for having such great vision and a willingness to support these new ideas in our classrooms.

I will talk more during Back to School Night in October about how we will be using this new addition to our class.