Spelling City

Here's a cool website to work on sight word memorization and spelling.

The site’s TeachMe function spells and displays spelling words in ways that stimulate memory for visual and verbal learners. For added fun and offline learning, Spelling City also offers Printable Games including WordSearch, UnScramble, WhichWord? and MissingLetter.

I don't have any spelling lists up right now but please check back later! 
My username is CGriffin23 (just like for RAZ-kids).

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October News & Announcements

General Announcements
Thank you to parents who have been making sure to send snack and changes of clothing with their students every week! The cross categorical team appreciates all that you do and it makes a huge difference for your student's classroom experience!


As the weather gets cooler we are beginning to gear up for congestion and runny noses in the cross categorical classroom. If you are able to send "soft" tissue, disinfectant wipes, and/or small bottles of water for our classroom they will be of great use to us. We wipe down all surfaces in the classroom at the end of the day but, despite our efforts, germs still spread quickly in our small shared space. Be sure to encourage students to cough and sneeze into their arms. That way we can all be at school every day with happy, healthy bodies...ready to learn!


IEP Goal Updates
Next week we have parent-teacher conferences and I'll be joining classroom teachers to present data on student progress towards their IEP goals. If you can't wait until next week to get a peek at how your student is progressing you can go to your student's individual page right NOW and see data charts for academic goals being assessed using AIMSweb. Parents, be sure to check them out and email or call me if you have any questions.


Home-School Communication
We have very busy days here at South Side and we're not always able to get in touch with you to share the celebrations and progress updates. Likewise, you as parents and other team members aren't always able to share updates and announcements with each other.


I've long been searching for an easy viable way to improve home-school communication and I came across this new tool that I wanted to share with all of you.
Introducing...

Check out this video for a description of what Goalbook does.

Goalbook for Parents from Daniel Yoo on Vimeo.


I appreciate ANY and ALL feedback on this web tool. Please let me know what you think of it. If I get enough positive responses I'll look into setting it up for our team. Email me at: griffinca@champaignschools.org or call me at (217) 351-3890.


Thank you!


Dates to Remember:

Oct. 12 – South Side Night at U of I Volleyball!!!  7:00 p.m.

Oct. 14 – End of 1^st Quarter

Oct. 14 – Early Dismissal

Oct. 18 – PTA Meeting @ 6:30

Oct. 26 – Scholastic Book Fair

Oct. 26 – Pumpkin Night

Oct. 27 – Scholastic Book Fair

Oct. 27 – Fall Parties

Oct. 27 – Early Dismissal – P/T Conferences

Oct. 28 – No School – P/T Conferences

Have a great month!


--Ms. Griffin

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Updated Learning Web Pages

I've added several new fun and interactive web sites for students to practice their skills on. Shhh! It's a secret...don't let them know that they're learning. ;-)

To highlight a few...

Excellent Early Learning activities!

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RAZ Kids

Families, our RAZ-Kids website is ready to go!

Please go to: http://www.raz-kids.com/main/Login

My teacher name is CGriffin23

Each student's password is his or her first name (all lowercase letters)

We haven't completed the developmental reading assessment (DRA) testing so for right now I've just placed students at level aa! Please let me know if it's too easy and I'll bump them up a level. Otherwise though, I'll have to wait another 2 weeks to get their accurate DRA scores.

Let me know if you have any questions!

-Ms. Griffin

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Join the South Side Yahoo List-Serve

Go to groups.yahoo.com/group/southsideschool to get to the South Side Elementary News List homepage. If you already have a Yahoo ID, sign in (scroll down; look on the left). If you do not have a Yahoo ID, it is quick and easy. you will see where to click. Once you do this, you can get to the South Side Elementary group homepage.


On the South Side Elementary group homepage, click on the "Join This Group" tab on the top right.


In Step One:

• You need to change anything on your Yahoo Profile
• If you just opened a Yahoo account, the only email option is the Yahoo address. You should change it to your preferred email address so you will receive the communications at the address you most use. During gthis process, you may be taken away from the "Join This Group" page, so you'll need to go back to groups.yahoo.com/group/southsideschool and click "Join This Group" again and then continue.
• You can tell the owner who you are and what your connection to the school is

In Step Two:

Choose "Individual Email" if you would like to receive messages when they are posted OR choose "Daily Digest" if you want to receive a compilation of messages all at once later in the day.

In Step Three: 

Message preference is up to you. Type in the confirmation code and your request will be approved by the moderator shortly.

P.S. I tried it and figured out that you can log-in using a Facebook and Google account. You don't need to have a Yahoo account.

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Student Pages

Families,

It turns out that in order to view student pages you must have a Google account. I thought that there was a work-around for this but I've done a little more investigating and apparently I was mistaken.

In order to maintain the privacy of student pages, only users with Google accounts can access the pages. If you would like access to regular updates on your child please create a Google account and then email me your account information so that I can give you permission to view the web page.

If you are concerned about having an additional email account, please don't worry. There are many ways to have your Google account messages forwarded to your current email address. Please refer to this guide if you are concerned about that:

I'm very sorry for the added inconvenience, but this is the only way to keep "just anyone" from viewing student information on the web.

Thank you for your understanding.

--Ms. Griffin

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Lexia Reading

If you've looked around the web page you may have noticed that one of our "Websites We Love" is Lexia Reading.

The school district has generously purchased access to this phenomenal resource for students receiving special education academic supports. All students learning in my classroom have their own log-in information (no passwords, just user names...to simplify things) and will have opportunities throughout the school week to get on a computer and practice skills using the software.

With Lexia Reading’s School-to-Home Connection, each student will be able to pick up where he/she left off in school, and continue to make progress developing his or her reading skills at home. There’s no starting over or repeating what they've already mastered in school, and the I will be able to see progress from the classroom and home sessions in 1 integrated report.

All you need is a computer with internet access to conduct a quick, one-time download, creating a desktop icon which allows your child to use Lexia Reading.

For instructions on how to download Lexia Reading Software to your home computer please go to:http://www.lexialearning.com/files/support/LexiaReadingSchoolToHomeOverview.pdf

Our classroom code is: 9352-2164-4129-7790 


Please let me know if you have any difficulty; I'll be happy to help!

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September News & Announcements

General Announcements
The school year is now in full swing! Thank you to parents who donated items to our classroom. Your gifts really made a difference.


I've conducted assessments with all students to see what kind of progress or regression they made over the summer towards their IEP goals. For students with academic goals the AIMSweb progress report charts are now on their individual pages. Parents, be sure to check them out and email or call me if you have any questions.


Math
This fall the Unit 4 Special Education Department purchased a math curriculum specifically for students receiving special education services. The curriculum, SRA Corrective Mathematics, is organized into seven strategic modules that provide teacher-directed instruction on critical skills and concepts which struggling students often fail to grasp; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, basic fractions, decimals and percents, ratios and equations.
Carefully structured practice develops skills students need to learn efficiently from instructional materials by helping them.

• Learn and retain facts.
• Understand place value.
• Solve computational problems.
• Discriminate among various types of story problems.

If you would like to learn more about the curriculum please feel free to email me and let me know.

Reading
The Unit 4 Special Education Department also purchased a new reading curriculum this fall called Reading Mastery. The program begins by teaching phonemic awareness and sound-letter correspondence and progresses to word and passage reading, vocabulary development, comprehension, and building oral reading fluency. Later lessons emphasize accurate and fluent decoding while teaching students the skills necessary to comprehend and learn from expository text. Lessons are designed to be fast-paced and interactive. Students are grouped by similar reading level, based on program placement tests. 


In addition to SRA Reading Mastery, we are using SRA Corrective Reading and Barton.


If you would like to learn more about which curriculum is being used to instruct your child please email me and let me know.


Homework
Homework is a very important part of school but is NOT meant to frustrate students (or parents). I've asked classroom teachers to adapt and/or provide alternate homework for students who are working at different levels than the rest of the class. If you have concerns about your child's homework being too difficult please talk to the teacher or me and we can make accommodations. 


Please make sure that your student reads at least 10 minutes a night from a book at their level and remember that the more you read to them, the more examples of fluent reading they will have.


Dates to Remember:
September 5th: Labor Day-No School
September 10th: School Improvement Day - Dismissal 12:00
September 13th: PTA Forum-What is PBIS? 6:30-7:30
September 16th: PTA Walk-A-Thon Assembly @ 2:00PM
September 19th: TV Turnoff Week Begins
September 20th: PTA Ice Cream Social @ 6:00PM and General Meeting @ 6:30
September 29th: 2nd grade trip to the Pollinatarium




Have a great month!


--Ms. Griffin

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Fall 2011 Wish List

Let me begin by saying that you are NOT required to provide any of these things…

This is simply a wish list of items that would help support our classroom. Nothing has to be “brand-specific” as we can use generic or name brands!

If you are able to send in any of these items, it will be greatly appreciated by our team…but DON’T WORRY if you can’t.

Velcro for Individualized Activities



Goldfish or other snacks

Juice (for those hot days)

Bottled Water (some of our students get overheated very easily. I like to have extra bottles of water in the cross categorical classroom for them to access whenever they need to. We've found that trying to keep track of personal water bottles, back and forth, between classrooms can be difficult)

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Welcome Students and Families!

Welcome to Miss Griffin's Cross Categorical Classroom Website

Hello! Here you will find updated pictures, videos and news about our class. This is a quick and easy way to stay informed about what's happening in our classroom this year!

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