Migration Project

Dear families,

I know that some of you may be working on the taping of the interview for the migration project soon. I have gone over all the students' questions and have returned them. Everyone should be ready to interview. In class, we talked about adding a question at the end that would allow the person to add anything more that they had not yet said.

Here are some guidelines for filming:

1. The frame should show the face of the interview subject. The children's faces may not be included in the image--this is very important.
2. Please remind the kids to do a sound check before they begin recording (just record the subject saying a few things and then play it back to be sure it is recording intelligibly.)
3. Be sure the lighting is adequate and that the subject's face can be seen. Be careful of backlighting (for example if the subject is sitting by a window or outdoors) and make sure you have enough ambient light for your camera.
4. If you have a tripod, it will help steady the picture. If not, you might find a place to rest the camera while filming.
5. I understand that it helps to stop the camera between sections of questions so one can edit more easily. These are called "clips". When editing, you can search a clip for the parts you desire to keep instead of having to go through the whole video.
6. You can send the recording to school in DV (digital video) tape format, on a CD, or, if all else fails, on your camera itself.

Please contact me with any questions by email or phone: 644-0841

Have a great weekend,
Mary Welsh

Parent Update - 4/12/2009

Dear Parents and families,

Spring seems to be upon us now with these wonderful green hills and the lupine and poppies making themselves known. I trust you all had a nice weekend and for those who celebrate Passover or Easter, a special weekend of gatherings, good food, egg hunts and such. For those who attended or helped at the ISM Gala, thank you for your support. I hope you had a wonderful time. A previous commitment I had did not allow me to attend this year but I've enjoyed attending in years past. I'm sure it was a big success and I hope our class art project brought in some needed funds.

We had fun doing some Gold Rush activities on Friday afternoon. Hopefully, everyone learned who were the ones that made money during the gold rush and know who Levi Strauss and Mr. Ghiradelli are and how they were able to get some of the gold.

This week should be a "regular" week.

The migration interview questions are due Monday. The students did most of the work in class but were to check with their parents to see how their questions looked. They need to be written neatly or typed to turn in. I do not have much of a count of video cameras yet. Please let me know( if you haven't already) if you have a camera you know will work for the project.

We will have the math assessment for unit 8 on Wednesday as we have one more lesson in Unit 8 for Monday and a day to review beforehand. I will be sending the hard copy of the review home tomorrow and am including it at the end of this note as some folks were not able to open it.

The students will get new spelling words on Monday. The test will be Friday as usual.

Everyone chose new books for the book clubs on Friday and so we are off on a new round of book club activities and seminars. Check with your child to make sure they are keeping up on their reading, roles and word studies for book club. They can certainly read their book club book for their nightly reading time.

On Friday, I sent home the permission slip for the Monterey Symphony trip for next Thursday, April 23rd. Please fill it out and return the form this week. We will need drivers for the 1/2 day trip. We will leave school around 8:30 and I assume we will return by lunch time. The field trip is a no cost trip (except for the drivers).

Homework this week:

Monday
Math; Study Links 8.8
Spelling: Sort and write words
Reading: 20 minutes and record in planner
Handwriting: pg. 60

Tuesday
Math; Study for test
Spelling: Sort and write words
Reading: 20 minutes and record in planner
Handwriting: pg. 62

Wednesday
Math; Parents read parent letter for unit 9.
Spelling: Sort and write words
Reading: 20 minutes and record in planner
Handwriting: pg. 63

Thursday
Math; Study Links 9.1
Spelling: Study for test
Reading: 20 minutes and record in planner
Handwriting: pg. 64

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Math Study Guide - Unit 8


1. Find the perimeter of a polygon.
2. Find the area of a polygon drawn on a grid.
3. Draw a rectangle with a given area and perimeter.
4. Solve number stories involving area.
5. Add and subtract fractions.
6. Predict the outcomes of a spinner experiment.
7. Express the probability of a block-drawing event as a fraction.
8. Use formulas to find the area of a rectangle, parallelogram, and triangle.
9. Use a scale to draw rectangles with given dimensions.


Have a great week,

Mary