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Richmond Third Grade - Ms. Martin and Hirahara Sensei

March 2 - Hirahara Sensei ひらはらせんせい

Dear parents and guardians,

I just want to thank you to all the parents who signed up for helping us with field trip last week to PYS concert. That was very short, but amazing performance put out by local high school students. They surely sounded like professional level.

Students learned names of instrument, groups of instrument, components of music, etc. Our short field trip made it possible for the students to see the real instruments, musicianship, and also students experienced many other aspect of field trips; manners at the public, walking in downtown, etc.

All of the parents who could come with us this time, "THANK YOU SO MUCH!" . We will let all the parents know, when our field trip in May gets approved, and the plan is set to go. I should be able to announce the date and time sometime before spring break.

Aizawa Sensei's last day to be a student teacher in my classroom is going to be this Thursday. I will let you all know if we can set a little time aside for us to thank her dedication.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR CONSISTENT SUPPORT!

February 19 - Hirahara Sensei ひらはらせんせい

I hope you all had a restful, happy Valentine's Day weekend. It feels like spring is just around the corner now.

Thank you so much to the parents and grandparents who pitched in to help us bake cookies for our Valentines Party last Thursday. Meg helped us with coordinating and cutting up the butcher paper for basket making. (She worked on this at home as well as in the classroom on the party day.) Catherine helped us by cutting up the parchment paper for baking at home. Noriko helped us with cutting up the sticky frozen cookie dough into pieces. Kikuyo helped throughout the morning and afternoon to make sure all the preparations for the party went smoothly. Two grandmothers, Dorothy and Julie, pitched in to help bring the cookie sheets to the oven from the classroom. Shinobu helped by distributing cookies and toppings for the party, etc. There were other parents who helped us as well during the party with details and clean up. Thank you so much for your kind teamwork!

We received letters from one of Sumaura School students who received cards and a treat from third graders. He said he had a great time at Richmond, and enjoyed his time with third graders. Thank you so much to the parents who helped our students make cards and cookies for them.

We are having the second OAKS testing (State Testing) this week. I want to thank all the parents who have been monitoring their student’s health condition, sleep, breakfast, etc. Each student will take as much time as they need to complete this round of testing. I hope students will enjoy the different learning environment by using this special opportunity to learn test-taking skills as well as other skills.

Students will be writing "Thank You" notes this week to our guest speaker, Chiyoko Honma, from the Sapporo Sister City Association. She brought wonderful photos to show to our students, and shared fun memories and facts about Sapporo last week on Monday. Many students asked her good questions and she answered to all of them!

There will be a Katakana Test along with the Katakana word test next week Monday or Tuesday. The following words will be tested: yooroppa( Europe), Amerika (America), Pootorandoshi (City of Portland), basukettobooru (basketball).

I will be giving the Kanji Test next week on Monday or Tuesday Feb. 23, 24; (with stroke orders) yuki (snow), iro (color), hidari (left), (without stroke orders) fuyu (winter), ashi (feet/ legs), te (hand), sen (thousand).

As you know we have a fun field trip coming up next week on Wednesday. We will visit the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland. Please make sure to turn in the field trip permission slip from Mrs. Martin.

Thank you again for working closely with us.

February 1 - Hirahara Sensei ひらはらせんせい

Third graders have been busy studying without many pull out times for other activities at school. We love having Aizawa Sensei in our class. She just started her student teaching lessons from last week. She will teach one or two of her lessons to each class every week from now until Spring.

Sumaura Visitation and Valentine's Day Party
Students from Sumaura School in Koobe are going to visit Richmond the week of Valentine's Day. We will be having a party on Thursday, February 12 to accommodate their schedule. I will keep in touch with all of you through the classroom rep parents.

Math
Students learned the word factor for multiplication. (factor x factor = product) We worked on recognizing the factors of 28, 36 and 48 last week. We will use that new skill next week to expand the horizon of their number sense up to 1,000.

We have taught how to measure in metric: weight (g), length, width and height (cm, m), perimeter (cm). We will keep working on distance (cm, m, km), weight (kg), volume (ml, l), and perimeter. Please review and encourage your child to use metric measurements at home, since those units are available to look at on the packages of most household items.

Students have been reviewing elapsed time, algebraic relationships, how to use multiplication and division concepts in the real world, how to interpret a bar graph, etc. We are trying to review all those concepts for the state Benchmark testing in late February or the first week of March.

Most of the students are now working on Oral Multiplication Memorization (x 8). My goal is that all of my students will be able to pass all the multiplication tables from x2 through x9 by the end of February.

Japanese reading and writing
Students are now reading about the 5 continents. They will use this knowledge to bridge to a unit on Sapporo. We are planning to have a guest speaker in a couple of weeks that will present information about life in that city. Students will learn about the City of Portland both during and following this unit.

Students read about "Oshoogatsu" (おしょうがつ and are now trying to complete a memory board for Oshoogatsu in class. They are going to make a set of Karuta (かるた - card game) for our sister school (Miyanomori Shoogakko) in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. We will complete and mail the set to them by next week.

Katakana word test --- Oregon, Portland, potetomassha, purasuchikku no booru
Students have started to use Katakana words more in class. I will start testing students with Katakana used in the classroom this coming week. Students had some opportunities to practice the words. I encourage students to practice those words at home.

Students will keep taking Katakana/ Hiragana chart tests once in a while to review the chart. Please have your child practice those at home, if your child had difficulty in that area. (These character writing skills are the most basic skills your child needs to build other skills upon.)

This week's Kanji test list
tenn (heaven), ame (rain), shuu (state)--- tested with stroke orders

ue (up/above), shita (down/ below), naka (inside), soto (outside)

January 13 - Hirahara Sensei ひらはらせんせい

We had a fun day pounding mochi on Friday. Thank you to the parents who came and helped in class. Shinobu Christman, Noriko Dillard, Kikuyo Jurgens, Kristina Kallen and her mother(!), Miho Purcell, Ryoko Ozasa (Cole's mother), Jill Tuleya worked together to help us cook rice, pound, smooth out, put the dishes together for the students to eat, served some of the "Osechiryoori" dishes for the new year, and helped us clean up. Meg Matsushima volunteered to go shopping for the ingredients.

I want to thank you to the parents who brought some ingredients and tools for the events. Students had a great time. I want to thank all of the parents who offered to help the event. I feel lucky to work with all of my students every day, but I realized even more how lucky to work with students here as a team by having parents with such caring and helpful heart. Thank you very much!

The parents who came to help last week got to meet Aizawa Sensei. She has taught in Jill Sensei's classroom (kindergarten) last term, and she will be doing some teaching in my class in a couple of weeks. She has started helping and observing our classes from last Tuesday. Aizawa Sensei has been helping students learn Katakana, math, and individual help in class. Aizawa Sensei is a great asset to your child's education in 3rd grade class.

I want to clarify some of the homework procedures, since the first page of homework became more difficult from last week. I think third grade Japanese homework should not take any more than 30 minutes a day with good focus. My intention to have Japanese homework is to reinforce learning, which happened at school. It also teaches planning and managing schedule, time and material on a daily basis. As you know these skills become crucial for learning from now on.

I highly recommend to use a timer when your child starts homework, set it up for 30 minutes. If your child is too tired to read the first page all the way through, please have him/her to break them up by paragraphs. You can also have your child to choose which section of the page 2 to 4 to complete for that day before he/she starts. The required reading (page one) is twice per day, but if it is too much for that day, make it as a good focused for just one time. Please remember that writing one sentence for the Kanji section is required, if your child writes more than one, he/she earns extra points.

For this week's homework only, the reading Q and A ( page 4) has 8 questions. First 5 questions are required and last three are for the extra points.

I hope this clarifies some questions, and please let me know if you still have questions. Again, thank you so much for working closely with me.

September 3 - Hirahara Sensei ひらはらせんせい

My name is Michiko (Parshalle) Hirahara. Please call me Hirahara Sensei which is my maiden name. The first day went smoothly for the most part. I bet your child had a long exciting day at school and was pleased to be back home.

This is my second year at Richmond. I am very excited to be here to teach after teaching in Eugene for twelve years prior to the last year, which I had eleven years of teaching third grade at Yujin Gakuen Japanese Immersion School. As I still learn how school operates at Richmond, I am amazed how much continuous effort and results of hard work done by parents, community members, principals, students and teachers and other staff members. I feel lucky to work with your child and with you this year.

Interns?
We don't have stable intern who will be working with us this year at least until March. (We are short of numbers of interns, but not the quality of the work they do for all the school.) But, don't worry, I will be seeking out any chance to have any native speaking volunteers for my students this whole year. All the Japanese interns and teachers are on the same page to help each student out with our limited resources. I am hoping to get back to you with creative schedule of interns here and there to provide extra native speaking help in the classroom.

School Supplies and material fees
Thank you so much for sending school supplies and checks to school today. We have received quite a few notebooks. If you didn't have a chance to go shopping, would you please bring Band-aids instead of notebooks.

Please have your child bring a check or cash (in an envelope with your child's name) by next Friday, September 12. I am not going to accept any responsibility over the envelope and/or check, which doesn't have STUDENT'S name on it. We will use the class money you pay this term to buy necessary materials and to budget for class field trips. But as you know, $10 doesn't stretch far these days, we may need to ask you to pay some more in the future for specific reasons, such as classroom party, supplementary fee for the class field trip, supplementary materials. We are going to try save our classroom budget by sharing with you our wish list as much as possible before we purchase extra supplies.

Two Classes and Individual Numbers
We have two classes of third grade. The class that starts the day with Ms. Martin is Blue Class (aogumi - あおぐみ). The class which starts the day with Hirahara Sensei is Green Class (midori gumi - みどりぐみ). We don't share supplies, but math books go back and forth in a cart.

Every student received individual numbers and I asked everybody to memorize it today. Blue Group's student number is from 1 to 30. Green Group's student number is from 31 to 60. We are going to use this number to sort mailboxes for the students so that any body can understand whose piece of paper it is.

PE Days!
Green Group will kick off this year's PE tomorrow! (Please make sure your child will dress appropriately tomorrow for safety, if your child is in the Green Group.)

Green Group's PE day --- Tuesday (8:45-9:15) and Thursday (8:45-9:15)
Blue Group's PE day --- Tuesday (8:10-8:40) and Friday (8:10-8:40)

Behavior Expectations and Reinforcement in Japanese class
Mrs. Martin and I will be teaching more about procedures and how to be a good learning community member this month. I will be help creating our own classroom rules tomorrow.

I have explained group point system today, and I will be using this system to reinforce the positive behavior. As a class we all are going to encourage each other to achieve learning goals.

Individual Positive Behavior
I am going to use color behavior card systems for individual students. I have a big chart with students' names in class. I will be putting the tags on their names as I catch the behavior during the class.

Green card --- Great learner! (3 blue or green tags = 50 yen)

A yellow card ---A warning after a non verbal/ verbal warning

A pink card--- A time out (go to the time out spot) and do the assignment quietly for 5 minutes or so.

A Pink tag --- A time out at Ms. Martin's room, Ando Sensei's room or at the office. I will be calling home about the incident and discuss the consequence and a plan for the improvement.

There is a lot more to this system, but I will explain how I will be reinforcing the positive behavior later in the newsletter.

I will share the individual behavior information with parents at the conference as well as the academic ones.

Do you want to volunteer for your child's class?
Weekly homework is not going to be starting immediately. If you are one who can help in the classroom, please sign up the time, days of the week and specific areas you want to help. Please feel free to send me email for questions and also for Japanese Classroom help. If you need to go through the PPS background check to be working with students but can hardly wait to help some ways, there are a lot of things you can help students and me without direct contact with studenst. Please do not hesitate to write a note.

I can be reached by email. I usually try to check email in the morning, and hopefully sometime during the day (it really depends on the day), and after school. You can also leave me a message through Patsy, but I prefer emailing the most. (mparshal@pps.k12.or.us)

Thank you so much!