Category Archives: Weekly Updates

Weekly Update: April 28, 2015

Hi families,

I am so sorry for my absence on the blog lately! There are quite a few updates to share with you all:

  • Report cards have gone home. Please go over them with your child and sign and return the envelope. Please contact us (the teachers) with any questions you have.
  • This Friday, May 1: there are 2 important events going on!
    • Charles Barrett Earth Day celebration: Please have your child stay after school on Friday to help beautify and improve our already-beautiful grounds. Activities will include lots of planting, transplanting, and re-planting, as well as mulching, watering, weeding, and trash picking.
    • PE Adopt-A-Gym Fundraiser Fun Run: at 3:45. Pledge forms have gone home. Please encourage your child to get pledges to help a school in NW Washington, DC build their collection of gym equipment.
  • Next week is Screen-Free week here at school. Please encourage your children to refrain from using screens at all, just for the one week. In addition to the myriad benefits to your children’s mental and emotional growth that can be had by taking a break from screens to use their imaginations, it is better for our environment for them to not be using electronics! Here is a great website with TONS of nature-based, awesome activity ideas to keep your kids entertained and to stretch their imaginations.
  • SOL test dates have been planned. Please mark your calendars as follows:
    • Tuesday, May 19: Reading
    • Monday and Tuesday, June 1-2: Math
    • Thursday, June 4: Science

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Weekly update: March 24, 2015

Dear families,

happy last Tuesday of March! A few updates for our homeroom:

  • Please, please let me know if your child will be missing school this week or the week we return from spring break so that your child’s teachers can prepare work for him/her.
  • This Friday, March 27 is Book Character Day. We invite your children to dress up as their favorite book character for school that day.
  • This Saturday, March 28 from 8:30 – 9:30 p.m. is Earth Hour. Please sign and have your kids sign the pledge banner in the front of the school and pledge to turn off lights and electronics just for that one hour to make a statement about global warming with your family. Please talk to your children of the reason for this event: to help stop climate change! This is a worldwide event and it would be awesome if our entire community participates. Thank you!

Have a wonderful spring break! Please let me know if you have any questions!

Weekly Update – March 17, 2015

Dear families,

Please mark your calendars…here are some important dates coming up:

  • BOOK FAIR: Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 18, at 1:00, our homeroom will go to the book fair to make their purchases. Your child has made his/her wish list. I hope you have had a chance to discuss his/her choices and have made some decisions. If you would like your child to purchase any books, 1:00 tomorrow will be a time where students can do that. Please send your child with money if you wish for him or her to buy books at that time. The book fair will be open all week until 3:30 p.m. as well.
  • LOS TIOS RESTAURANT NIGHT: Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 18, from 4:00-9:00 pm, stop by Los Tios for dinner or even order online. 10% of all proceeds to go CBES PTA!
  • PRACTICE SOLs:  please ensure that your child is on time to school on these days – these practice tests will give us valuable information to help us prepare all students for our SOLs this spring!
    • Today, March 17, 2015: Reading Practice SOL
    • Tuesday, March 24, 2015: Math Practice SOL
    • Friday, March 27, 2015: Science Practice SOL

 

Weekly Update – March 10, 2015

Dear families,

I hope you all have enjoyed your mini-snow-days-vacation! We are so glad to have your kiddos back here with us. Some updates for the upcoming weeks:

  • It’s “Book Fair Time” again! The Scholastic Book Fair will take place in the library multipurpose room March 16th-20th.Our family night will take place Tuesday March 17th before and after the music program.  All students will “Browse” (fill out wish list) on Monday March 16th. We will shop next Wednesday. Preview by clicking on the link below to find even more great books at
    http://bookfairs.scholastic.com/homepage/charlesbarrett
  • “March” to school this month! Help our homeroom earn the golden shoe by having your child walk or bike to school on the following days: March 11, March 18, and March 25.

Some updates on our research project and reading assignments for my language arts classes:

  • all students have begun a draft on their Google Drive accounts. If they can access the Internet at home, they are expected to work on drafting their research at home. First drafts are due to be finished on their Drive accounts by Thursday morning at 7:00 a.m. We will edit together in class on Thursday.
  • Final drafts of research papers will be due on Friday afternoon at 3:00. The snow days put us behind so we have a lot of work to do to catch up.
  • Most students’ books and thinkmarks are due on Friday, March 13. A few groups have an extended deadline until March 20 (next Friday). Please ask your child about his or her book and thinkmarks and help them remember to finish them!

Thank you!

Weekly Update: February 27, 2015

Dear families,

this snow is making us a little crazy! I hope you all have enjoyed the winter wonderland and that the kids have gone out to play in it.

A few updates from homeroom:

– Kennedy Center field trip is scheduled for today!

– On Monday, March 2 we are going to the National Art Gallery on a field trip. Don’t forget to pack a lunch for your child unless you requested a bag lunch from the cafeteria.

– On Wednesday, March 4, we are going on ANOTHER field trip to GW Middle School.

– All homerooms are getting introduced to their Google Drive accounts. Please sign and return the bottom half of the letter that is going home with your child regarding his/her account. If you have time, it would be awesome if you could look through the account with your child. I will post some links to help guide your discussion with your child about online safety and digital citizenship.

Please get in touch if you have any questions!

 

How to talk to your kids about online safety and digital citizenship

Hi families,

as you know, students have received their login information for their Google Drive accounts this week. This is very exciting for the way it will revolutionize how our kids work, but along with it comes great responsibility to keep themselves safe and to be digital citizens.

Please take some time to talk with your kids about what it means to “stay safe online” and be a “digital citizen” – these are incredibly important topics in our kids’ generation! Below I have pasted some links with resources to help you start these conversations with your children.

How to talk to your kids about safe email habits

How to talk to your kids about digital citizenship

Research Update

Hi families,

What a crazy week with this weather! We have used the little time that we have had this week to gather notes for our research topics and begin to organize them. Most students have gathered at least 4 notecards per sub-topic that they are researching, using books and trusted websites (see previous post about trusted websites). Due to our limited time this week, I have given students an extension until Monday if they have not finished their notecards to continue their research over the weekend.

In reading, our original deadline for the books they are reading in small groups was this past Thursday (February 19) but due to the weather I gave students an extension until Monday. Please encourage your child to finish his/her books and thinkmarks and research over the weekend. Like I told them, when we lose time we all have a bit of extra work to do to make up for it, even though the weather is out of our hands.

This coming week, students will be creating Popplets to organize their notecards. Their Popplets will serve as their planning web for their research papers. We will begin drafting our papers on Wednesday of this coming week.

In word study, we are studying prefixes this week and next week. Students are also learning the words immaculate, vigorous, and tamper. Please talk to your child about these words! Students also added their own new words from their reading to their personalized word study lists. I encourage you to talk to your child about the new words he/she is learning in reading!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Smart Research Online!

In the last few days this week, we have begun doing online research for our projects. Here are a few key points from our lessons about researching smartly and safely online:

  • Don’t use any old random Google search! It is not filtered for safety and some results might come up that are not appropriate for people your age. Use Sweet Search, Squirrel Net, or Find It VA (links from our blog on the right side of the page) instead.
  • Wikipedia is not a trustworthy research tool: it’s fine to use in your personal life when you are looking for information, but it can be written by anyone with an account, so we don’t trust it as a resource for our academic research.
  • Websites can appear legit and trustworthy and not be in actuality, so it is important that you use the three A’s to evaluate it: appearance, author, and accuracy. Ask your child about the process they go through when evaluating a website before using it! The attached photo shows our anchor chart for determining if a website is “AAA”.
  • We MUST cite our sources using MLA format! We are writing a list of sources and each notecard is labeled with the source it came from.

Please chat with your child about how research is going, and encourage him or her to spend a few minutes this weekend gathering a few more notes from their book or online resources.  Have a great long weekend, and we will see you all on Tuesday!

photo of website evaluation chart

Weekly Update February 9

Dear families,

This week, we have a short week with conferences on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. If you have not yet confirmed your child’s conference time with teachers, please do so as soon as you can.  As a gentle reminder, we have early release on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

We have begun our in-depth research project in reading and writing – our first unit of the third quarter. Students are still reading fiction novels on their own, and completing Thinkmarks to show their thinking, but our focus in class time from now until March 6 is conducting an organized research study, then synthesizing and turning new learning into a research paper.

Please ask your child what his or her research topic and question is: everyone has chosen his or her BIG question that will guide the research process. If you have time to bring your child to the public library to search for more resources, that would be helpful! Please stay tuned as I will be posting the research rubric soon, which I will use to evaluate students’ research papers at the end of our unit.

Thank you again for visiting! Please take some time to explore the links on the right side of the page.

 

Welcome to our class blog!

Dear families,

Thank you for checking out our class blog. Please be sure to check back regularly to find important class announcements and assignments.

Here is a quick update for you:

We finished our reading unit on fiction this past week with a high combined pass rate of 84% of students passing. Ask your child about his or her reading goal for the upcoming quarter as we just completed reading assessments and students have updated their goals.

Students have shown a lot of creativity writing fantasy short stories involving a hero, a villain and a quest. Most have finished publishing and we will share next week.

In the upcoming weeks, we are starting new reading and writing units in research. We will be teaching and going through the research process to become experts on a topic. Please be chatting with your child about topics they are passionate about and interested in, as we prepare to brainstorm ideas for research projects!