National Lutheran School's Week

Hello parents,
My post from last week carries over to this week quite a bit.  However, please take a look at the following flyer for National Lutheran School's Week.  We will be collecting items and having dress up days!  Please also be looking for an email from Mrs. Leet about parent volunteers for Friday morning Jan. 29th.  We'd love if you can help us out!

Meet Mr. Sam Sessa

Beginning this Thursday our class will be teaching our class religion for 3 weeks.  He is currently a student at Concordia Seminary and is fulfilling required course work in our classroom.  He also does his field work at The Lutheran Church of Webster Gardens so you may have seen him around before.  His wife is Leah Sessa who serves on the praise team here at Webster Gardens.  He will be with us most mornings, so please introduce yourself and make him feel welcome.  

Author Visit

The order forms for the books written by our visiting author were sent home last week.  If you would like to order a book please return the form by tomorrow and NO LATER than Wednesday.  I have been reading these books to your kids in class and they are very entertaining!

Important Dates

**Important Dates - Please mark your calendars**

Friday, January 22 - CCLS Bingo Night

January 24th - CCLS Sunday @ Prince of Peace

January 24th - Lutheran Schools Week Open House 12-3 p.m.

January 24th - 29th - National Lutheran Schools Week

Tuesday, February 9th - Teacher Professional Development Day; NO School

                                        CCLS Day @ Hidden Valley Ski Resort

February 12th - Valentine's Day Party @ 2:00 p.m.

February 15th - NO School; Presidents' Day

March 14-18th - NO School - Spring Break

March 25th - NO School - Good Friday

March 28th - NO School - Easter Monday

April 11th-15th - Achievement Testing Week

April 21st - Elementary Grandparent's Day

   7:00 p.m. Elementary Operetta at Webster Gardens 

May 26th - Last Day of School; Join us for closing worship and early dismissal 

Memory Work

I'm so sorry this is late... Here is this week's memory work:

The 2nd Article
Redemption

And in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died and was buried.  He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead.  He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty.  From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.

Week of Jan. 11th

Hello parents,
Thank you for all your warm birthday wishes and prayers for my house this last week.  I cannot tell you how much that has meant to both me and my family.  I believe we will be moving into our new house at the end of next week if everything goes well.  So thank you for your patience as I have been busy moving and painting (and lots of other things).  I do have to tell you all that your kids have been wonderful.  They are so encouraging and a true joy to be around each day.  Thanks for all that you do for your kids and for me!
Here's a look at the next couple weeks:
Reading:  We are preparing for our Author Visit (Feb. 5th - 6th).  Janet Stevens Crummel is a fabulous children's author who will be visiting our school.  In order to prepare and welcome her, our class is reading her books, but especially And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon.  We will be covering topics like maps, idioms, nursery rhymes, and other related literature.  Watch for our projects to be popping up in the hallways in the next week or two.  They will be scattered throughout the hallways.

Grammar: We have finished up talking about plural nouns.  In your child's writing I will be looking for them to correctly use and spell plural nouns now.  If this is still a struggle please point it out on their homework.  Next up we will be talking about possessive nouns.

Math:  We have already covered fractions, but we are reviewing them this week.  We will begin to get into probability and ratios toward the end of this week and beginning of next week.  You probably saw that I noted how many addition facts your child has mastered on their report cards.  We will begin multiplication facts in 2 weeks, so please hit those addition facts hard at home.  I promise it will make a difference on how much math homework they have next year.

Social Studies: Maps are our focus for a couple of weeks.  They will be doing a map of nursery rhyme characters to tie into our Author Visit book.  They will also be getting familiarized with United States geography and locations.  Both projects will be started in class and given time to work on in study hall.  However, they will be homework depending on how much your child finishes at school.

Cereal Donations: 
Our campus will be collecting cereal boxes to donate to a food pantry in the city.  These may brought in anytime before Thursday January 28th.  This will be very similar to what we did last year for National Lutheran Schools Week.  We will have a cereal breakfast on Wednesday January 27th to celebrate and whatever is unused will go to the food pantry at St. John's Morgan Ford. Start bringing in the cornflakes!

December 9th - 18th

Religion:
Memory for the week is only the Christmas parts that your kids are responsible for.  I sent home the sheet on Monday with the words printed on it.  We have also been working on it a lot in class together, but just in case you need them:

Shepherds view the starry night
And behold a wondrous sight:
Angels sing of Christ, the King;
Listen to their voices ring.

Math:
Today we started looking at measuring distances and lengths to the nearest quarter inch.  This is a difficult concept that combines rounding numbers, fractions, and measuring.  Be patient while your kids keep practicing this skill

Reading:
We will be looking at Christmas stories that leave Jesus out of them starting on Monday.  Our goal will be to complete a project that adds Jesus into these Christmas stories so that the characters will know the true meaning of Christmas.  This will be done in class and the end projects will be put on the blog over Christmas break.

Grammar:
We will be covering nouns until the end of 2nd quarter.  We have already covered common and proper nouns and are moving on to singular and plural nouns through next week.

Science:
Next week on Wednesday is our weather vocabulary quiz.  I will send home a review sheet on Friday.  The kids are also going to be creating their own weather maps and filming a weather forecast based off of the map they put together.  They will most likely need some time to work on it over the weekend, but a lot of in class time will be given tomorrow and Friday.  These weather maps need to be finished by Monday at the latest.

Cornerstone and Grades
I have been doing my best to get grades up on Cornerstone in time for you to see them before the quarter ends.  I will be putting more late and redone work into the gradebook this weekend.  If your child turned something in before this last Friday it should be in the computer.  If it was turned in this week, I should have it all up to date over the weekend.

Important Dates:

• Monday 12/14 - CCLS Advent Service @ 7 pm (Middle School/Concordia Sanctuary) 
• Please arrive in time to be seated with Mrs. Glackin no later than 6:55 pm.
• Please make sure your child has used the restroom before the service starts. 
• Dress for church in your Christmas outfits or Sunday best.  
• Friday 12/18 - Class Christmas Party @ 2 pm
• No School  12/21 - 1/1
• Classes Resume on Monday 1/4/16

Week of November 30th

Dear Parents, 

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Break and are well rested.  I have had a couple of really great days with your kids and have enjoyed getting back into our normal routine.  Here's what you can expect for the next week or so: 

Santa's Workshop:

Tomorrow is our classes time to go shop at Santa's Workshop.  The envelopes were sent home before break.  If you plan to send money, Thursday is the day!

Religion:

We will be going through the book Voices of Christmas and discussing all of the characters from the Christmas story from their point of view.  Your kids have a book full of discussion guides that we are going through in class.  If they don't finish a page in class, it will need to be completed as homework.  This will take us all the way to Christmas break.  

Math

We are still working with money a lot and the word problems are beginning to be multiple steps.  Yesterday and today we learned about fractions using candy and money.  We will take a math test on Friday, so some review on word problems and time may be good.  

Reading:

We are reading a story called Author:A True Story that exposes kids to a real author's experience and story.  We are also working on deciphering an author's purpose for writing pieces: PIE= Persuade, Inform, Entertain.   

Grammar:

For the next 2 weeks we will be working with all different types of nouns.  They will need to identify, sort, and appropriately use the following types of nouns in their reading and writing: Common, Proper, Singular, Plural, and Irregular Plural. 

Writing:

Our writing for the next 2 weeks will integrate what we are learning about an author's purpose and nouns.  Your kids will accurately write a short paragraph for each letter of PIE and then identify and sort the types of nouns they used in those paragraphs.  A lot of this will be worked on in class, but if they don't finish a portion of it on a given day it will be homework.  This must be done in order to be able to do the activities I have planned for each day.  If they fall behind on this, it will be difficult to participate in class the next day. 

Science:

Yesterday we began our weather unit.  This will take us all the way to Christmas break.  I sent home a calendar for the unit yesterday.  This will be a lot less work intensive than our Thanksgiving unit.  However, it will require some homework and study time at home for a vocabulary test and short quiz next week.  Please see the calendar for specific dates.  

Help Fund Our Author Project

This is the flyer with the vouchers containing our ID. The ID #11731379 is unique to our school.  There will be copies of it at every register in case our supporters do not have a voucher, but they must initiate the request to have it credit CCLS.  They won't just automatically credit every sale to us.

The Book Fair date is Sat., Dec. 5 from 9:00-9:00 at West County Mall.  If anyone wants to order on line, they use the ID number as well.  Online orders can be applied from Dec. 5 through Dec. 10.  Everyone should know that purchases include everything that is available in the store including Nooks, books, magazines, games, CD's, and even food.

Book Fair Coupon Code - Use on December 5th (You must have the BookFair ID at checkout)

Thanksgiving!

Dear parents and students,
As our class has spent the last few weeks studying the Thanksgiving holiday I am reminded how grateful I am to have a class full of lovely teachable children and supportive parents.  Thank you for all that you have done to help your kids and myself with our Thanksgiving celebration.  I am so proud of their hard work and it was a joy watching them grow through the process.

I have put the videos of all their presentations on the Social Studies page of this blog.  Your kiddos should have a study guide with questions for each video that they brought home with them. During the break they should watch each video and be sure they can answer all of the questions.  On Monday they will take a quiz on each video that exactly matches the questions we sent home.  (These are questions written by the students that produced each video, which is why some of them are repeated.  Mr. Fishburn and I approved the quiz written by each group before we sent home the questions.)

Lastly, we are on Lesson 14 for spelling when we return from the break.  Preparing a word list for Monday is the only other homework the kids have over break.

Have a great Thanksgiving!
Mrs. Glackin

Week of November 9th

Religion:
We have been working our way through the questions on Baptism in the catechism last week and this week.  Your kiddos have brought up some great questions and discussion topics.  I'd encourage you to talk with them about their own baptisms and how that grace and forgiveness is still alive in them today.

Math:
We have been working on adding money and counting larger amounts of money.  In the next week or so we will be taking on the challenging concept of fractions.  This is brand new concept for the kids and often takes more than just a couple of weeks for them to get the hang of .  Any practical application with fractions like pies, pizzas, hershey's bars, oranges, etc. will help them develop deeper understanding of the concept.

Writing/Grammar:
We have 2 major writing assignments and a couple of smaller assignments that tie into our Thanksgiving Unit.  I have sent home directions for the 2 major assignments:

• Thanksgiving Tradition Essay - 
• The rough draft has been turned in and now each child will self-edit their writing and then conference with me.  If needed they will do a 2nd rough draft. 
•  Final Due Date - Fri. 11/20
• Magic Treehouse: Thanksgiving on Thursday - Book Review
• This was assigned Monday in class and we have read through ch. 7 so far in the book. There are 10 chapters and we plan to be finished reading the book by Thursday.  Mr. Fishburn and I have about 20 copies of the book that the kids can check out if needed.  
• There will not be a required rough draft due date for this assignment, however, I am more than happy to look over what your child has read before the final turn in date.  
• Final Due Date - Wed. 11/18

Our grammar for the next 2 weeks will be integrated into these writing assignments.  We are really working hard on proofreading marks and combining sentences to make them more interesting.  

Reading/Social Studies:

These 2 subjects will be going hand in hand until Thanksgiving.  Your kiddos have been digging into books are other resources to find information on their Thanksgiving projects.  We have been teaching them how to do research, cite sources, and apply what they have read to a project.  They have been working hard! 

Thanksgiving Events: 

Kelly Ritter and Robyn Soetart have been sending out invitations and emails about volunteer sign ups for the the events leading up to our Feast.  If you see them, please thank them for the time they have put into helping Mr. Fishburn and myself.  Here are the ways you can also be involved: 

1. Come join us for the Feast! Thursday Nov. 19th @11 am (Please RSVP by Mon. 11/16)
2. Volunteer as a helper on Pie Making Day - Wednesday Nov. 18th from 1-3pm. 
3. Donate! We need as many families as possible to donate the following items (please sign up outside the classroom or contact Kelly Ritter if you can donate an item or 2): 

2 turkeys (if you would like to donate a turkey but not cook it let me know)

2.    2 volunteers to cook turkeys (only if needed)

3.    3 Green Bean dishes (each should be able to feed 10-12 people)

4.    3 Stuffings (each should be able to feed 10-12 people)

5.    3 Mashed Potatoes (each should be able to feed 10-12 people)

6.    2 Gravy (each should be able to feed 12-15 people)

7.    2 Sweet Potatoes (each to feed 10-12 people)

8.    3 Corn dishes (each to feed 10-12 people)

9.    6 dozen Rolls/Bread

10.  3 Cranberries (each to feed 10-12 people)

11.  10 $6.00 donations for supplies to make pies

*** The above food items will need to be prepared and cooked   

 Have a great week!