Dear Parents and Grandparents,
K-4 and K-5 learned a new song for Christmas. They did a wonderful job with the song! I appreciate the teachers and parents who sing the songs with the children at home or in class.  I especially want to thank  Miss Savannah for her assistance.  Our new song is "Little Tree."
       Uno dos tres arbolitos,
       Cuatro, cinco, seis arbolitos,
       Siete, Ocho, Nueve, arbolitos,
       Diez arbolitos mios.                         (We change "arbolitos" to "Estrellas"  and "Duendes.") Trees,
                                                                  stars, and elves.

1st. grade  We answered questions and continued counting in Spanish.  We applied knowledge of numbers to telling time, but we have not actually begun  a formal study of telling time.  We continued learning the days of the week.

2nd grade   We finished our clocks. I am taking them home to completely finish because of limited time in class to complete them.  Students can tell time to the quarter hour.  I will bring the clocks to school next week to allow students to practice at home.  It is so neat to hear the students asking each other the time and hearing the responses in Spanish.  If you ask your child at home to tell you what time it, it, she may respond in Spanish!

3rd grade - We have two different activities for the third grade classes.  Miss Cockrell's class has a homework assignment.  Miss Bower's class has some new terms to study, but no formal homework.
Miss Cockrell's class* needs to write twenty digital times once again, and write the
Spanish number words indicating the time shown.  Here are the numbers the students need to know:
uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez, once, doce, trece, catorce, quince, diesciseis, diecisiete, diecocho, diecinueve, veinte, veintiuno, veintidos, (etc.)  treinta, treinta y uno, etc. cuarenta, cuarenta y uno, etc. cincuenta, cincuenta y uno....cincuenta y nueve.
Ex:  1:15   Es la una y quince.  (Only 1 o'clock uses "es la."  2:20  Son las dos y veinte.
We already copied this structure for reference.  Some students are not copying down the information they need to do the assigment, even though we ALWAYS  complete at least two or three examples before students leave.  We learned all numbers last year and I distributed lists of all the numbers to 100 to students last year and at the beginning of this semester. 

Miss Cockrell's class needed to review time.  I felt Miss Bower's class did not need to review based on oral evaluations of our time unit in class.

4th Grade We completed time unit.  No homework.  Students did a superior job with their questions and answers about the time they do certain activities.  There was a minor interruption, so we were not able to begin our discussion of how to describe people's personality traits.  I did ask the students to think about a best friend and what they would say to others about that friend, i.e. where they live, what is their favorite color, food, sport.  They do NOT have to write anything.

5th grade did not meet.  We will meet on Thursday.

6th grade took a short written exam.  They wrote eight sentences about their  best friend. I took a look at the sentences and see that students are really grasping grammatical structures in Spanish and have an excellent vocabulary. I am so proud of our sixth graders! The homework assignment is to bring a picture cut from a magazine, an original drawing, or a photograph* that represents what they feel is the best gift they can give to someone.  They do NOT have to write anything to accompany the image.  I saw students today who asked if they could please write something in Spanish to accompany the image!  I told them it was not required. Of course, students may try to write a brief paragraph in Spanish that explains their gift.  Again, the paragraph is NOT mandatory.  Coming to class next Monday without a drawing, photograph, or magazine image will result in a 0 for this assignment.