We had a great start to our new school year! We have so many wonderful activities and trips planned. We can't wait to head to Broadway in December to see "Annie." We will also have exciting several new trips to be announced shortly. So stay tuned.

You all did such a great job with your bio poems and they are prominently featured on display, near the elevator. We look forward to our first author's celebration on Friday to share our chaining memory booklets. It will be the first of several times during the school year when we will have the chance to share our published work with each other (and nibble on a few goodies as we do so).

Please make sure to check the homework page every night and try to stay up to date with due dates. I will begin sending notes home to your parents if you are missing work. You will usually have a problem of the week due every Friday. Science news responses for now, are due every Wednesday and current events responses are due every Thursday. This is apresidential election year, which is very exciting. In a few weeks, we will begin a special "Electing the President" unit. But for now, you should be watching the news and following the candidates and issues at www.timeforkids.com and nicknews.com. You should be working on your reading journal responses and completing entries in your writer's notebooks regularly. There will be other long (and short term) assignments. If you are confused or have questions, it is your responsibility to ask me for clarification and assistance. If I do not hear from you, I will assume that "all is clear." I will be sharing a homework planning sheet with you soon. You will need to pace yourselves since many of your assignments are long-term. You may have more than a day or two (sometimes up to a week or more) to complete your tasks. You will have to begin to plan how you want to space your work out so you don't get stressed by saving it for the last minute. We will discuss.

I look forward to meeting your parents this Friday, September 21 for "Meet the Teacher" day in the morning. Band will begin this week, too. I know we will have another great week. Hope you had a wonderful, long weekend. See you soon

Bon jour-hello, everyone!

Montreal is a  beautiful city. Most people are bilingual and speak both French & English, although all of the street signs are in French. Here is a scene from the downtown area. A French delicacy I checked out was poutine, which is basically french fries covered with cheese and gravy. Actually, I am not a big fan and just prefer my fries with good old Heinz ketchup. It was very warm during my visit. I got to check out several sites including Old Montreal, which is one of the oldest urban areas in North America and features beautiful cobblestone streets and lovely architecture, the Botanical Gardens, Olympic Park and the Biodome, which is located in Olympic Park contains four  different ecological habitats - rain forest, polar, marine and forest - where visitors can see the plants and animals native to each ecosystem. It was so cool to check out animals including the polar penguins & puffins, the tropical monkeys, parrots and beavers. Have any of you ever visited Canada? (We will actually study the regions of Canada this year in-depth. However, our first social studies unit will be about the geography of the western hemisphere. We will also learn more about explorers of the western hemisphere).

I can't wait to hear (and read all about) your exciting summer vacations. Have you had any super special experiences lately? Our first unit of study this year will be memoir writing. So get set to write about those memorable, life changing moments.

We will also be working with a new multi-media math series called Envisions. We will also be doing a lot of problem solving and real-life math investigations. Our first unit will be on place value and decimals.

We will launch our reading workshop by setting goals for ourselves, start keeping track of what we read in our book logs, continue to developing important ideas about texts, review ways to respond to texts and how to conduct post it chats and begin reading partnerships.

Please make sure you have your supplies, completed your inventories and summer reading logs. Also, please try to get your Broadway permission slip and deposit back to school as soon as possible.

Well, I could keep writing. But then I may be at a loss for words on Thursday and that wouldn't be very cool now, would it?

Anyway, au voir, goodbye for now and I can't wait to meet you in a few days.