Beyond The Desk

Hi!  It’s Mrs. Goosen here.  Last Thursday I sent home a study guide to help your child prepare for the Inuit test this Thursday afternoon.  I will also post it here in case the guide didn’t make it home.  We will end off our unit with a movie called AnArctic Tale – a really great documentary type movie following some arctic animals.  If your child would like to bring some snacks to eat during the movie they are welcome to do so…I will bring a little snack for the class to share as well.

Thanks & happy studying!
Mrs. Goosen

INUIT STUDY GUIDE

For your information, I have added the dates of the FSA’s to the online blog calendar. There are quite a few of them and I have tried to space them out as best as I could while also leaving some time for helping the students to prepare for them. Please remember to practice the online FSA’s and the practice math questions that were sent home last week with your children!

Here is the spelling for the week. I know, I know! You have been waiting, eager to get going on it!

M-5

Spelling 0-3

Here are the links to Spelling City. Don’t forget! You can bring in your completed spelling test with 100% on it and receive a bonus mark for your spelling test!

Pockettales has been a new experience for us this year. Moving our home reading program onto the web as been lots of fun and has been a positive experience for the students as they build their reading at home to gather badges, points, and levels. While we want students to enjoy reading for reading sake, sometimes a small amount of motivation can help with getting students to move forward with their reading.

Pockettales has become a great friend to us here at the class blog and I thought it would be neat to give them an opportunity to speak about their motivations for creating this site and where they hope to go with it. Yaw was very excited to contribute and share his thoughts.

When I was young, I wasn’t the best reader. On top of that, I was always worried that when I started a new book, I wouldn’t like it. I was afraid of spending time reading a new book only to find out halfway through that I wasn’t really interested in it. My lack of interest in reading led me to do worse in my English and Literature classes than the others I was taking, and my poor grades quickly made me lose interest in reading altogether.

In 2^nd grade, my teacher let us play a game in class called Number Munchers. It was this really fun game where you had to solve a math problem, and once you found the answer you moved a tiny little green monster to the correct number and he would eat it! My friends and I would challenge each other to see who could get the highest score, and we shared our progress with each other all along the way. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’m sure now that playing that game was what caused me to really love math. What I also didn’t know was that I was learning a lot by playing that game. It was so engaging and challenging that it didn’t feel like work at all!

I often wonder what would have happened in my 2^nd grade class if I had had a reading game I loved as much as I loved Number Munchers.

Pocket Tales is the game I wished I’d had when I was younger. We created it because we wanted to turn reading into a game we’d love to play and share with our friends.

Reading is more fun (and educational) with friends.

The best part of books is when we can share what we are reading with each other. Although we all read books on our own, the best way to learn from reading is when we can discuss with others what’s happening in books. Our friends might have uncovered a clue or noticed something really interesting that we might not have noticed reading it on our own. Isn’t it fun to hear what your friends thought about the crazy adventures Geronimo Stilton went on or why he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro? Me too! Reading is fun when you share all the interesting facts you learned from those books with your friends.

We want to help you find great books.

I said earlier that one of the biggest reasons I didn’t read lots of books when I was young was because I couldn’t find books that I liked. I wasn’t alone, it happens to a lot of kids. In fact, the top three reasons that kids don’t read more books are because:

1. They have too much schoolwork or homework. Uh oh, we can’t help you there, better file a complaint with Mr. Hancock.
2. They would rather do other things. Well, maybe playing the Pocket Tales game will be so fun that you won’t want to do all that other crummy stuff, like chores or laundry, ha ha!
3. And lastly, they can’t find books that they like. Yes, we know! We can help!

I know the books I really liked were the ones I picked out on my own or the ones my closest friends were reading. By letting kids recommend books to their friends, we hope to be a powerful recommendation engine that helps kids discover books that they will actually LIKE to read.

Games are the best!

Lastly, every great game keeps score, right? Well, at Pocket Tales we aren’t worried so much about score. We turned reading into a game because games give you a fun way to engage with your favorite books on a deeper level, and that’s really important to us. Engagement in reading is one of the best ways that have been found to help kids learn and succeed with reading. We hope that if we can help you find books you like while also helping you learn something from every book you read, you’ll become a better reader and develop a lifelong love for reading.

With Pocket Tales, our goals are simple: 1) to encourage you to read more often by making reading as fun as possible, 2) to help you find more books that you’ll love to read, and 3) to help you get more education, entertainment and engagement out of every single book you read.

We hope you have as much fun playing Pocket Tales as we have had making it for you!

—
Yaw Aning

Chief Executive Officer
Pocket Tales | Adventures in Reading

Well, that time has finally come. FSA tests are upon us and will be done throughout the month of February. There are 6 components to the test with two of the parts, Reading and Math Problem Solving, done on the computer.

We have been practicing throughout the year. However, more practice can always be done so that students are used to the style and presentation of the test questions.

You can help too!

If you click on the link below, it will take you to the practice pages for both Reading and Math. You can work through the problems with your child. As they can be challenging, for Math, encourage your child to highlight and draw pictures using the important information.

Click here for FSA practice pages

As you probably know already, our school has started a couple of fund raising campaigns. This year we are focusing on raising awareness and funds for our playground and for the upcoming missions to Haiti.

Our playground continues to be a well used and loved area of our school. With the recent equipment purchased, students have gained a whole new way to use their minds and bodies to stretch, manipulate and interact with. These are all important skills and abilities for growing minds and bodies. As such, we are looking to purchase more equipment to give more students an opportunity to use the equipment and participate. For that fundraiser, we are looking to start a coin drive for the month of February. If you have any loose change lying around or a piggy bank that is starting to look a little fat around the middle, please consider donating to our playground fund and giving to help our students and school grow in opportunities to learn and play.

The second fundraiser, our mission trip to Haiti is also a very important one. In a time and area, where there is so much hunger, loss and needs, our missions trip is our opportunity to give to those who need so much. In the student’s planners today, you will see an order form for Krispy Creme donuts. The Missions group has also provided us with a specific need that they would like us to give towards. They are looking for us to help them with providing the following things:

New or Gently Used

• small stuffed animals (Beanie Baby or Webkinz size)
• toys (Hot Wheels, dolls, balls, cars and trucks, etc.)
• summer clothes, sandals and flip flops for ages 5-17
• Pencil Crayons, and glue sticks

If you can help us out with those items that would be wonderful!