Dear Parents,
Ahhh what a relief! The class was back to normal today! The children's behavior has been improving day after day until yesterday, but today that regression turned around and their behavior was much better than it had been yesterday.
Today the students needed dictionaries to find and write definitions of a list of vocabulary words. I discovered last week that many students lack knowledge of many rather common vocabulary words that fifth graders should know, understand, and be able to use in writing and conversation. The BIG PROBLEM is that most of the dictionaries in the classroom are appropriate for primary grades, but not for fifth graders.
Yesterday I asked the kids to bring to school a dictionary such as The American Heritage Dictionary that has over 70,000 entries. It's rather thick, and it's comprehensive enough to serve the children well from now through university. The one I have is a paperback and cost $5.95 when I got it a number of years ago. They are a good investment, and one the children will need to use for many years. (There are other comparable dictionaries available. I just named the one I happen to have.)
I have a nice big pile of papers to grade over the weekend. The good news is that next week I'll be able to finish nearly all the test prep. lessons, and I'm very glad about that. The only real push at this time is to complete as much as possible of the last two math chapters before the California State Tests of mathematics--which I'm planning to do on Monday and Tuesday, May 10 and 11.
Please return the letter indicating you are able to drive and chaperone the May 28th beach field trip, if you are able to do so. THANK YOU!!
Have a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Ruth Landmann
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