“Wednesday Folders” went home today.  Wednesday Folders will go home every Wednesday with any forms, notices, graded papers, etc.  Please take out the papers inside of the folders, sign any forms, read any notices, and review work.  Then send the empty folders back to school to be refilled.  As I disclosed at Back-to-School-Night, sometimes the folders may be sent home late.  If you ever wonder if this is the case or have a question where they are, please send me an e-mail.

As part of tonight’s homework, students were asked to bring home their “small” Wonders text to check for any damage.  Please record the page numbers of any damage and the kind of damage on the lavender form, Textbook Condition Record Sheet (it’s on the back of the Library Permission form).  Students will bring home the second Wonders book tomorrow, followed by the Science book.  Both sides of the lavender form need to be completed before students will be allowed to check out books.

I met with Sunrise’s Instructional Coach today, and this year I will be trying a new approach to spelling.  I will not be having Spelling Pretests and the traditional end-of-the-week spelling tests.  Instead I will introduce the spelling patterns using dictation at the beginning of the week of example words that follow the pattern.  The class will then practice the spelling pattern throughout the week with whole-class blending and dictation.  They will also be working on the Wonders Phonics/Fluency spelling pages that go along with the spelling pattern.  The end-of-the-week spelling pattern test will only be 6 to 10 words – with only a few words from the “list”, a few “cold-pattern” words (students haven’t practiced them),  and two challenge words that add an additional syllable, affix, etc. to the spelling pattern.  There will also be one dictation sentence using a high frequency word and a spelling word.