Good afternoon!

We started off the day today working on a writing activity. The students were asked to compare the differences between a note and a letter. Once the differences were understood, the students were asked to write their own notes to someone either, thanking them for something, or offering them best wishes.  A lot of creative ideas came out in that activity!  We continued on with language where the children worked on special sounds, compound words, opposites, and cursive. After language the children continued working on their final summative project for our current Unit of Inquiry.  The students all came to school today with their rough copies of their stories begun.  In today's class the children continued working on their rough copies, and some even had theirs edited and began working on their good copies.  Tonight for homework, the children have been asked to complete their rough copy versions of their stories.  Once the good copies are completed, there is an art elements that follows the stories.  The children will all have to take their story and turn it into either a painting, poem, song, dance, puppet show or diorama.  The art element will begin on Thursday.  If your child has decided to create a puppet show or diorama, please help by sending them in supplies they can use for its construction.  During math today the children worked on exploring the difference in common shapes (grade one) and working with perimeter (grade two). They also went to music, P.E and french class.

Homework: Read for 15 minutes and record in the reading chart, practice weekly spelling words, math pages 154 - 155, cursive pages 138 - 139 and complete rough copy of the story.

Important information:  Tomorrow is a gym day again.  The week of March 5th, we will see gym days return to Monday and Wednesday as usual.

Thursday, March 1st is the next casual day.  If your child has paid their $2 they may come to school dressed in any casual clothing they would like.

On Thursday each child is going to begin creating the art piece to accompany the stories that they have written in class.  Your child has the choice of creating a song, poem, painting, play, puppet show or diorama.  If your child has chosen to make a puppet show or diorama, please help by sending in supplies for them to use.

On March 7th we are having our St. Patrick's Day Spirit Day. Children are asked to come to school wearing green to help celebrate this holiday!

Pizza forms have gone home with all children last night  Please keep your eye out for them.

All children have brought home a permission form regarding an upcoming Reptile Show that is taking place at SJA on March 8th.  The event will give the children great information that will be used in an upcoming 'Charcteristics of Animals' unit.  Please make sure the signed permission form and $5 are brought into school by March 1st.

Please see a copy of the rubric I am going to be using to assess the story and art piece the students are currently working on.  Both items will be completed and assessed by this Friday.  I hope that by having the rubric available, it will help set the students up for success!

Best regards,

Mrs. Nelson

Work habits	Excellent. Worked very well with no interruptions.	Very good.  Worked well with few interruptions.	Fair.  Worked with many interruptions	Poor. Was not able to work due to interruptions.
Quality of the story.	Excellent.  The story showed thought and made sense.  There were little to no errors. Evidence of effort always showed. Proofreading was evident.	Very good. The story showed some thought and often made sense.  There were a few errors that did not distract. Evidence of effort usually showed. Proofreading was almost always evident.	Fair. The story sometimes showed thought and made some sense.  There were many errors. Some evidence of effort was shown. Proofreading needs improvement.	Poor. The story showed no thought and did not make sense.  There were many errors that distracted. No effort was shown. Proofreading needs great improvement.
Creativity	Excellent. The story was extremely creative and showed ‘out of the box’ thinking.  The story did was full of interesting ideas and passion.	Very good. The story was creative and had interesting ideas.  The story showed some passion for writing.	Fair. The story did not show a lot of creativity or passion for writing.  The ideas were standard.	Poor.  Little to no creativity was shown in the story writing.  There was no passion shown.  The story ideas were basic.
Quality of art piece.	Excellent. The art piece showed tremendous effort and completely reflected the story.  A great deal of effort was shown in its creation.	Very good. The art piece showed good effort and mostly reflected the story.  Effort was shown in its creation.	Fair. The art piece showed little effort and did not seem to reflect the story.  Little effort was shown in its creation.	Poor The art piece showed no effort and did at all reflect the story.  No effort was shown in its creation.