Dear Moms and Dads,

I can tell vacation is around the corner, as it seems that many children get sick right as vacation approaches. There are many colds, fevers, and loss of voice going around. I look forward to having everyone back at school healthy again.

Today Karen Kurzman spent time with us working on a piece of writing called a constructed response. This is a shortened version of the painted essay. It is often used on writing tests. It essentially asks the kids to write a topic sentence that uses words from the question. Following the topic sentence, the children would then write details with elaboration to support the topic sentence and end with a personal comment. For example, Karen read a story about a dragon that did many silly things. The question was: "How was the dragon silly?" A topic sentence might be: The dragon was silly in many ways. After writing the topic sentence, the children added details such as: "The dragon was silly when he ate all of his food at once. This made him so fat that he couldn’t fit into his car. After becoming to big for his car, he decided to push it down the hill to his house. This was a silly idea because there was no one to steer the car and it bumped into many things. Next he went into his house and opened his cupboard and said there wasn’t any food. It is very silly to forget that you ate all of your food on the way home.

The last part of the piece would be a personal comment that would restate the topic sentence in different words. A possible comment would be: This dragon sure was goofy.

Later in the day, I gave the children several questions and had them work in teams to practice writing a topic sentence for each one. One of the questions was: "How can weather be dangerous?" The children answered: "Weather can be dangerous in many ways." Or "Weather can be dangerous for people."

Karen was quite impressed at how well our first and second graders did on this task.

On Tuesday we finished up our work on liquids. The children were cute little scientists as they chose various combinations of liquids and solids to test. We found out that all solids do not dissolve in liquids. Our next science topic will be about forces and motion.

Tomorrow morning we will explore what Town Meeting is all about. We will role-play a Town Meeting in our classroom. We will have to vote upon a new rule for our classroom. There will be a select board that will present the proposed new rule. Children will present reasons to support the new rule and reasons that the new rule would not be a good idea. Then the children will practice voting three ways: yea or nay, hand vote, and ballot vote. Hopefully, your child will share this event with you.

Here are some questions to ask your child this week:

What liquids did you mix solids with? (vinegar, water, baby oil, vegetable oil or Karo Syrup)

Did you get all of your spelling words correct when Mrs. Orr gave you a spell check?

Can you write a topic sentence for the question "How is school fun?"

Dates to Remember:

EVERY FRIDAY: We’ll try to write in our home/school journals to you. Therefore, please return them to school by each Wednesday

March 12^th: School Assembly, 8:05

March 17^th: Report Cards and Narratives will be sent home

March 20^th Parent/teacher conferences (after school and evening)

March 21^st: Parent/teacher conferences. No school for children on this day.

March 22^nd: PTN silent auction and dance to benefit our playgrounds.

March 26^th: Early Release Day

March 28^th: PTN popcorn sale during snack