This year’s crop of Room 15 kids are off to a great start. This week we’ll be starting our first three Roald Dahl Mini Book Clubs: Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Giraffe, the Pelly, and Me, and The Twits. Each student will select one club to join and will have specific sections to read each night at home. Quizzes, discussions, and more reading follow each day, so it’s important kids keep up. Because these books are short, we anticipate spending only a week to ten days on them. If your child is struggling with the text, feel free to “buddy read” with him or her (the student reads a paragraph with adult assistance, and then the parent reads a paragraph as the child follows along with his or her eyes).  Because of Dahl’s dark sense of humor, his books tend to be a bit controversial–but they’re extremely effective at engaging even the most reluctant readers.

This week we’ll also be introducing our first set of vocabulary words, which can be found both in your child’s binder and here. These are tough words, but we spend a couple weeks on them before testing kids both on spelling and meaning (date TBA). Allow me to state the obvious: kids who study at home will do well, while kids who don’t will struggle. In math this week we;ll be starting our unit on Place Value. While this is review for most of our students, it can still be daunting.  Kids may need your help at home when doing their homework sheets, which are as follow: Monday, Sept. 10; Tuesday, Sept. 11; Wednesday, Sept. 12; Thursday, Sept. 13. Finally, sponsorship packets for our annual Jog-a-Thon, which has been moved from Spring to Fall, went home on Friday.