Dear Parents,
Thank you for visiting today to keep informed about your child's school day. I enjoyed seeing everyone at Open House. If you have specific questions about your child or would like to discuss the beginning of school, just let me know and we can set up a phone or in-person conference. Check out below to see what we've been doing this week...
Phonics/Grammar: We reviewed all of our long vowel sounds that follow the CVCe pattern. We created a chart with words that fit into each category of long vowel sound. We also began discussing the function of a noun. We listened to a catchy rap on nouns and played several partner games to make sure we were prepared for our assessment on Friday. Your child brought home their first spelling/grammar graded paper today.
Writing: We got our writing notebooks and discussed what good writers do and what they don't do in their notebooks. We talked about how authors have to be good storytellers (orally) before they can be good writers. I told a story about Scratch to illustrate expanding on a small moment to include lots of details, then we got with a writing partner and told our own small moment stories. We learned a strategy for brainstorming ideas about narrative topics and created our own list of story ideas.
Reading: We worked on building up reading stamina during independent reading time. We discussed how we know if our book choices are a good fit, if they are too easy, or too difficult. We began our chapter book read aloud, Stone Fox. The children worked in small groups (teacher-led) to improve oral reading fluency and decoding skills (how do we figure out the meaning of unknown words in a story). We visited the library for our orientation lesson and we are now able to check out library books.
Math: We finished up our unit on rounding numbers to the tens and hundreds. We worked with our online math supplement and used virtual manipulatives to show and then explain why numbers round up or round down. We focused on triple digit addition and subtraction during our number talks, explaining the strategies we use when mentally computing problems. We learned the A.C.E. strategy and solved a word problem every day in our notebooks. We worked in small groups to sharpen our computation skills with our Tile Math cards. We also reviewed place value to the thousands and ten thousands.
Social Studies: We finished up our 7 Habits of Happy Kids stories and completed a partner activity for each habit. We watched a short silent cartoon highlighting the principles of each habit.
Class News and Announcements...
We will begin using our Stone Fox chapter books on Monday. If you can, please purchase the book and send it with your child on Monday.
Every child should have a set of addition flashcards for at home and at school!
Please send in the Tellus Field Trip permission slip and money as soon as possible.
Thank you Mrs. Van Gelder for offering to be our chaperone on the field trip.
Picture Day is Tuesday, August 16th. Forms will come home on Monday,, so please return them with your child and payment as well on Tuesday.
Dinner Conversation Starters...
*What activity did you choose for fun friday this week? What were the choices?
*What "super specials" did you go to this week?
*Who are the main characters in Stone Fox? What is wrong with Grandpa in the story?
*What habit (from the 7 Habits) is the one you have the hardest time with? Which one do you think is the most important for kids to be happy?
*How do you know whether to round a number "down" or "up"?
No comments:
Post a Comment