1. Week of: October 13 th – October 16 th News to Know CONFERENCES: Next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are our first round of parent/teacher conferences! A slip was sent home this week notifying you of our scheduled time. If you are not sure when we are meeting, please email me. I will send a reminder email of our conference time next week. HALF DAYS: Next Thursday and Friday are half days! This means that your children will be dismissed at 11:00. We will still have a morning snack at school but we will not have lunch at school. COSTUMES: I know many students are excited about Halloween and a chance to wear their costumes. Please know that costumes will only be worn in the afternoon on October 30 th. Students should be able to slip their costumes on easily by themselves over the clothes that they are already wearing on that day. Please no weapons, masks or face paint. FALLING TEMPERATURES: We’re getting deeper into the fall season which means it’s getting chilly. Please make sure your child comes to school with proper clothing and an appropriate jacket. Rowdy Readers STANDARDS: This week we worked a lot on recognizing sounds and matching them to letters and words. We worked a lot of rhyming and will continue a lot of rhyming work next week. We also worked on some writing standards. We worked on labeling pictures and writing a noun and a verb that matched a picture that was drawn. Lastly we continued our work recognizing characters, settings and major events in books. Some of the books that helped us out this week were: Chester’s Way Owen Peter’s Chair Rooster Goes to Tio’s Wedding Jennifer Bing, Why Won’t You Sing SIGHT WORDS: We added the word “at” this week to our sight word collection. Our current list is now up to six with: “the”, “am”, “we”, “I”, “can” and “at”. To give you a heads up, we will add the word “like” next week! Math Madness This week we continued our work making sure that all numbers are written correctly. As we make our way through these number writing lessons, I am making sure that students avoid number reversals, know the quantity of the number and have fun doing these activities. We will continue working on number writing next week with more familiar activities. Upcoming Dates 10/20-20/23: Scholastic Book Fair 10/20-10/22: Parent/Teacher Conferences 10/22 & 10/23: Half Days (Dismissal @ 11:00) Monday, October 26: Mr. Dolan Absent Friday, October 30: Fall Party and Parade Saturday, October 31: Daylight Savings Wednesday, November 4 th : OPRF Food Pantry Field Trip Get to Know Your Child’s Teacher! Has Mr. Dolan always been a teacher...Nope! Mr. Dolan graduated from Augustata College in 2009 with degrees in Communication and Political Science. Shortly after graduating he got his first job working for Junior Achievement in the Moline, IL and did a lot of volunteer work at The Boys and Girls Club. While working there, he had the opportunity to run a real world simulator for elementary aged students in which students had to work, budget and care for themselves as adults with families. While doing this type of work, Mr. Dolan quickly realized that he wanted to be a teacher! He then moved back to the Chicago suburbs, was accepted into National-Louis University Master’s program and worked for Northwester Lake Forest Hospital as an insurance liaison. He finished this intense Master’s program in 2011 and was hired at Holmes that same summer.