Group 1 Announcements:

• Multiple Sclerosis Society Read-a-thon kits were sent home. Please send in a completed registration form for your child by Wednesday, Jan. 31 if they will be participating.
• Order forms for school T-shirts were sent home Wednesday, January 24th. Completed forms with a check made out to NCCL are due Tuesday, Jan. 30th.
• Our 100-day party is on Wednesday morning Feb. 7th. Your child needs to bring in a collection of 100 small things in a ziploc bag and a labeled cookie sheet for it to be displayed on Wednesday morning. They will be counting their collection and doing many other fun 100-day activities. We could use a couple of parent helpers for the morning. Please let us know if you are available. There will be a sign up sheet on the door for 100-day snacks, (popcorn, raisins, etc.).
• We will be celebrating Valentine's Day on Feb. 14th and would like all of the kids to participate in a Valentine exchange. We have included a class list of names. We ask that all children write a valentine for everyone in the class. Valentines are a very meaningful writing activity for our age group. Please have your child write and sign their cards. We recommend a few each night over an extended amount of time. That way the activity is not overwhelming. Thanks!

Class List (and news from the week of January 22-26!):

• N - In All-School Meeting we had a speaker from the MS Read-a-thon. We heard about reading books and how money could be raised for MS. A lady who has MS came also to talk to us about it. The Read-a-thon is a fun thing to do. I did it last year and it helps people.
• C - In Spanish we learned about food in Spanish, like ensalada (salad), leche (milk), pollo (chicken), and jugo (juice).
• N - The MS Read-a-thon speaker did juggling tricks. He was really good. We are studying the native Inuit peoples, so we are turning the loft into an igloo.
• E - We've been working on place value this week in math.
• A - It snowed this week and kids had lots of fun outside. Today it was too cold to go outside.
• O - I liked how the globes of the world got hung up this week. In our igloo we have a dog sled and fur dress-ups.
• I - In reading, we discussed the book Socks by Beverly Cleary. The chapter we read really makes you wonder what is coming next and want to read it.
• A.J. - Our igloo was built with ice blocks made of paper squares. We are studying the Arctic Circle and started with the Inuit people.
• B - I liked building our cardboard community and playing with it this week.
• Z - We painted pictures of peace, how we think the world would look.
• Tr - We played map tangle. A person picks up 2 cards and reads the 2 places. Then the player moves on those places with their feet on the giant world map on the floor.
• M - I enjoyed learning how Inuit sleep, with the youngest in the middle and the adults on the outside. This keeps the youngest family members warm.
• S - Today we learned the Inuit words to use when driving a dog sled: "Whoa" is stop, "Doo" is slow down, "Allie" is go.
• Ai - We watched a demonstration about how the sun shines on different parts of the globe as it goes around the sun. That is how seasons change. When it is summer in the Arctic, every day and night is sunny. In the Winter Arctic, it is dark all day and night.
• N - I liked learning spelling words and reading books. I read Hank at the Bank and Green Eggs and Ham.
• N - In chorus, we learned about quarter notes, half notes, whole notes and quarter rests, half rests and whole rests. We clapped out four musical measures.
• T - In reading, I had fun learning about chapter one of our chapter book called A Dragon in the Family. The story is good and the reading is challenging.
• K - We pretended to be Inuits by dressing up in Inuit clothes. I made a special Inuit fishing stick like the one in "Kumac's Fish" and then I played with it. We pretended to fish through an ice hole with our felt fish.
• M - We visited Group 4's museum and listened to their projects. We watched 2 videos and we walked around to look at their reports on the computer.

January 22-26:

We started off the week with an exciting visit from Bill Wood, who came to model story telling and talk about the use of rhyme, rhythm, and repetition in folk tales. In addition to giving the class a touchstone experience (one we can go back to and ask ourselves, "How did Bill use gestures? Expression? Pacing?," etc.), he also shared with me some resources he has found useful in working with kids on story telling. During the week we worked on a variety of ways to outline the plot of the stories we are telling. At this point, the kids have thought about, made pictures of, and considered voices for their main characters. They have also traced out the main events of the plot of their stories, whether in pictures, words, or a combination of both. In the coming week, we will work on use of voice (expression, volume, and pacing), facial expression, gestures, and eye contact. Your child will need to spend lots of time working on his/her story—out loud, preferably in front of a mirror. Please encourage her/him to work frequently so s/he will be comfortable with all aspects of the story s/he will tell. We look forward to Bill's return on Tuesday afternoon to help us work on these skills.

In math, we worked at stations that focused on adding and subtracting 2- (or 3- or 4-) digit numbers. At this point most kids have several strategies for approaching these types of problems, and as they work on math homework, they are welcome to use any method that makes sense to them. As always, kids should show how they figure out each problem—this really helps me get a sense of how they are thinking about numbers and operations. In the coming week we will be working on multiplication (for some students) and fractions (for others). FYI: we usually refer to multiplying as "groups of," reading "3 X 4" as "three groups of four." This seems to make more sense to kids than saying "three times four."

Sue has started new novels with the kids, so if you have seen a new book coming home, it's likely to be a book that your child is reading with a small group. Work with vocabulary and fluency will continue alongside the group books. We're almost at the end of Water Rat, and it seems the pirates will get their comeuppance.

We had movement class at the UD on Wednesday morning. This particular class focused on basic skills of throwing, catching, running, dodging, etc. In the afternoon we went to Phillips Park to do some science experiments related to our study of force and motion. Using swings and slides, we looked at the forces exerted by gravity and by pushes from a classmate. Some of the key words that we discussed during the week include force, gravity, weight, and friction. Please use these terms with your child as situations arise that involve them. We are working with these concepts in anticipation of our study of simple (and more complicated) machines. In our study of 18th century Delaware, we hope to look at the many simple machines that Delawareans used.

While Sue has been dealing with intestinal difficulties, we have been fortunate to have Tina Maclary join us several times this week. Tina has two daughters that have graduated from NCCL. In addition to many years as a Kindermusik instructor, Tina recently went through the Reading Assist program (as did Sue and Debbie K.) and tutors several students. We appreciate her flexibility in helping out with the class.

Dates to Remember:

• Wednesday, January 31—last day for MS Read-a-thon registrations to be entered for grab bag drawing.
• Monday, February 5—field trip to Delaware History Museum for the "Pirates" program (follow-up to Water Rat).
• Wednesday, February 7 at 7:00PM—NCCL Meeting - approval of next year's budget.
• Monday, February 12 5:00 - 9:00PM—NCCL Night at Friendly's (on 896 near I-95
• Monday, February 19—school closed in observance of Presidents' Day
• Thursday, February 22 at 6:00PM—"Moving Up" meeting for parents to learn about the group their child will be moving to next year. Children in the older half of each group will visit next year's group during the day.
• T-shirt order forms went home on Friday. If you need another order form, they are available in our room or in the office.

I wanted to thank those parents and students that worked hard to make Open House last Thursday such a success.

No report this month

Writing
Congratulations to all of the students in Group 4 who worked long and hard to complete their plays! On Monday, five minutes before the deadline, I submitted the second draft of the student's plays to Delaware Theatre Company's Young Playwright's Festival. Some kids were frantically re-writing moments before I had to leave to drop them off. I was so impressed with their dedication to make their plays the best that they could be.

We began our playwriting unit in October. The kids worked hard on all of the elements of their plays: developing the theme (defiance), creating believable characters, creating and building conflict to a strong climax scene, winding the story down through a resolution, creating settings that strengthened and enhanced the story and most importantly, writing exciting dialogue!

The students submitted the first draft of their 10-20 page plays to Delaware Theatre Company in late November. We received them back from DTC in early December. The theater company critiqued each play and had supportive comments as well as food for thought on areas that could use some improvement.

Since then, the students have been working hard on improving and re-writing their plays. After their second reading, DTC will bring in approximately 15 students to interview. Then they will pick three middle school plays to perform. No matter what happens, we all had a great time with the process!

Since the kids wrote wonderful plays, they need to be performed! The kids will be acting in each other's plays (using scripts) and we will videotape their plays and put them on CDs to go along with a bound copy of their script for a final, wonderful product!

Reading
All of the reading groups have finished reading their first novel. They have had some interesting and lively discussions on the books that they are reading. Each reading group is responsible for presenting their book to the class through some type of project. Some of the projects that the groups are doing are: writing letters to the authors, creating new characters that could be in the book, puppet shows acting out favorite scenes from the book, creating a new book jacket and introducing the characters from the book through monologues.

Research
We went on a wonderful field trip to Greenbank Mills to learn about Lewis and Clark. Tony, the curator, was a wealth of fascinating information and he had many, many artifacts to show us what life and the journey was like for Lewis and Clark. We learned how difficult it was to translate between L and C and the Native Americans and that it often took up to 5 people to go between. We decoded messages using the actual code system that L and C used to send messages back to the president. We also made fry bread and did some mapping and journaling exercises. Ray will be e-mailing pictures of the trip soon. We are looking into doing an overnight trip at Greenbank Mills in the spring to get an even more realistic hands-on experience as to what life was like for L and C and the members of the expedition.

The kids have finished their research projects on a historical figure from the period of 1800 - 1850. Many of the students had their first experience putting together PowerPoint presentations; others did posters, tri-fold displays, monologues and experiments that were on display in our museum.

Science
In Science the students are studying Chemistry. Each kid has a specific molecule that they are researching and constructing. They are building the models out of toothpicks and Styrofoam. The class will be putting together a PowerPoint presentation of their molecules, which will also be on display when the museum is open. The class has also been doing experiments with combustion. Kaboom!!!

Math
The math classes have been exploring advanced topics that the students will be learning about in high school. The kids are learning about logarithms, exponentials, summation and trigonometry.