We are busy getting into a routine. We tried our first stations this week and are learning how to focus and to give our best effort during independent work times. It is important for us to work on building our stamina as readers, to carefully listen to/read and follow directions and to try our best each time we work! Thanks for reinforcing these things at home as the students do their homework! I will hold off on having parent volunteers until the students are ready to show that they can work in stations on their own. I will be out of the room on Tuesday all day for a district meeting.
Important information: The students have earned enough compliment coins for their first special day. Next Friday will be stuffed animal day! Please read the letter attached to this week's HW packet for more information!! Be sure to tell them how proud you are of this accomplishment!
Reading:As we are starting to read non-fiction books we are learning that good readers read real information(facts), read the Table of Contents for the "big ideas", pay attention to the real photographs and visual information like diagrams and labels, and need to know the bold texted words by looking them up in the Glossary. (We will continue to add captions, index and other visual information like charts, graphs etc. to this list) Please be sure to help your child focus on these conventions when reading non-fiction books at home. We are learning that good readers have to read information books differently and often more than one time to learn and be able to retell facts.
Math:We are finishing our beginning unit on addition and subtraction stories, using our workmats/manipulatives to add (part + part = whole) or subtract (whole-part=part). We have been having fun practicing our math facts with some new games too. Our next unit will work on various addition strategies students can use to help them learn their facts and solve problems.
Writing: We continue to work on writing sentences. We have been learning that sentences have nouns(names of people, places and things) and verbs (action words). Next week we will add adjectives (describing words) and begin to learn that we write about one topic (start with a topic sentence, add three detail sentences and a closing sentence.)
Science: ANTS we have already started learning new facts about these amazing insects We set up our ant farm and got to go outside to study real ants in their natural habitat. As scientists we are learning to observe, sketch, label, and to be as accurate as possible. Ask your child to sing the body parts song for you!!!
Spelling: first test under our belts, next week's unit focuses on ag words.
I am working to finish up my reading assessments on each student, and look forward to sharing my observations with you all at our October conferences.
As always thanks for your support.
