Dear families~

January 18th, 2013

All homework is due by January 24th (THURSDAY): Spelling- Practice and complete the Free Choice page. Math- Sign up for ScootPad for math and reading skill practice. Continue to work on your Book-It form, as it is due on the 31st. Our new Spelling Words are: far farm arm art cart card chin inch live soon Our new Word Wall Words are: sometimes there city take house car Our new Sweet Sentence is: None, due to the short week ~~Please note the following and mark your calendar:~~

Jan 23rdJan 24thJan 25thJan 31st-

Bullying Assembly in the Gym at 12:30 Ask about it during Table Talk that night! Scholastic book orders are due! Take a look at Storia- Quite a cool app! NO SCHOOL due to Records Day Report cards will be coming home soon (Thursday) January Book- It is due! I will send Februarys Book-It the next day.

Look at the information coming home today on ScootPad. This is a site/app I will be using in the classroom and am really impressed with. The mini-lessons zero in nicely on our first grade requirements that need to be mastered. They are also aligned to The Common Core State Standards, so its a really nice program! You and I will be able to see when and how often your child is practicing so we can track progress and see which areas s/he struggles with. Give it a go by Thursday! Due to the short next week, our spelling pre-test will be given on Wednesday morning, with the final test given on Thursday morning. We will have no Sweet Sentence. Just a reminder, any reversals or unnecessary capital letters found on spelling tests will have to be marked as incorrect. Now that were in January, we have to start moving toward our 2nd grade preparation goals. Thank you for your help with this! Also, I experimented with changing my grading methods from the amount correct to the amount wrong, as this is also a second grade method. However, with the addition of our new 2nd grade teacher, this is no longer a consistency. Therefore, I will stick to grading assessments with correct amounts. In addition, please note that not all of the 2 nd grade teachers offer spelling pretests or an entire week to work on homework. If you find that your child is struggling now with spelling tests/prompt homework turn-in, please continue to work toward that goal. To promote 100% class homework turn-in, I will soon be implementing a Homework Trophy plan. Those students who turn their homework in by/on Friday will be put into a drawing to earn the trophy. It will sit proudly on the winning students desk until the next Friday! WOO-HOO!! You have noticed your students writing pieces coming home with corrections being made all over them. This piece is your childs first draft sloppy copy and was used to create his/her final, published writing piece on that topic. Once I conference with your child and help them edit their first draft, they then use it to craft their final draft. When all of their words have been transferred over to their final draft, they no longer need their first one, so it comes home. All published pieces are collected in their writing binders and their collections are really turning out quite nicely! A huge THANK YOU goes out to the Peters family for their donation bird houses and suet. They are gorgeous! I will dust off my shepherds hook and get some bird seed this weekend. Then, well hang them outside our window and wait for the beautiful birds to come! The students would like to designate every WEDNESDAY as Camp Cronce Day and wear their camp shirts to school. I told them I would let you know! We will begin this new trend next Wednesday, 1/23! Looking forward to the week ahead,

Mrs. Cronce

www.protopage.com/mrscronce