Week 5: Welcome New Students!

This has been another productive week for the Armadillos. I’m happy to announce that we have a few new additions to our afternoon class. We welcomed Jerry back on Monday as well. This week we have begun working through our ESL, social studies reader and are learning about families. In our math class, we are working on adding and subtracting three numbers at a time. This Friday we will work on writing and illustrating our own story books about our families. In science we are learning about food chains and different environments such as forests and grasslands. We read a story yesterday afternoon about Stan the Skunk who does ‘stunts.’ We are also continuing to work through a list of the hundred most common sight recognition vocabulary words each afternoon.

Lily continually proves that she can pick up new material at a very fast rate. She is beginning to understand what I mean when I ask her to mind her own business. We will continue to work on this.

Esther struggled a bit with our new math topics but she worked hard and focused in class and she is getting it. Her diligence and work ethic has been a positive model for the rest of the class.

Sunny has improved significantly this week. She still needs to focus in class and put and effort into not speaking out of turn. Lunch time and nap time, however, have been progressively improving.

Frank is still a bit out of sorts. He is getting better but he is still a little quieter than before. He has also been late every day this week. Morning circle is an important part of our day. Please try to arrive before 9:00AM.

Welcome to Jerry! He is a wonderful and welcome addition to our class. He’s a little behind in our math work but I have no doubt that with a little hard work, he’ll be back on the same page in no time. I’m looking forward to getting to know him better throughout the year.

Lauren has had another productive week. She still gets into trouble for chatting with the other girls when she should be working on occasion. Thank you for the letter. I understand that you are worried about the level of the weekend readers. We will discuss this in more detail at the Pot Luck next week but in the mean time, I can tell you that the stories will get progressively harder over the course of the semester. I have few story books of my own that Lauren is welcome to borrow for you two to read together. I can also give you a list of books available at local book stores to supplement our curriculum.

Evie opened up a little bit more Thursday afternoon. She is still shy and we are getting to know each other. A few of the other girls in the class have been very helpful showing her around.

Eliza is another recet addition to our class. She wowed the other students on her very first day by winning the sight recognition reading contest. I look forward to getting to know her better over the semester.

Samson is a bright young man and usually very focussed in class. He will need to pay special attetion to not chatting with the other boys and focussing during work time.