Week of October 21st

It was really nice to have the chance to meet with all of you this week for conferences.  I am really enjoying working with your children.  Please don't hesitate to call or e-mail if you ever have any questions or concerns.  Reports card will be going home on Friday, December 6th in your child's Friday folder.

This week in math we continued to look at strategies to help us add and subtract 2 different numbers.  We played with spinners and continue to use dominoes to help us with recognizing our addition facts.  We also made a Sea Star quilt and commented on patterns that we saw or things that we noticed.  Check out our photo below:

Next week we will be finishing up Unit 2 and moving on to Unit 3.   Unit 3 encourages student mastery of key number facts and fact strategies for single-digit addition and subtraction.  We will be using the number rack to help see number combinations, find the sum of two numbers, and compare two numbers to find the difference between them.  We will also be developing place-value understanding and solving addition combinations to 20. Finally, we will make use of Unifix cubes to help develop understanding of the difference model of subtraction.

In Reader's Workshop I am continuing to push the use of the various strategies to help figure out tricky words.  Some of the strategies we are using are:  looking at pictures, tapping out words, looking for known words within a word and skipping the word and reading through the sentence and then using meaning to figure the word out.  Once we have an idea of the word we always ask ourselves 3 questions to be sure it is the right word:  Does it look right?, Does it sound right?, and Does it make sense?

In Fundations we are working with digraphs.  Digraphs are 2 or more letters that make one sound.  The digraphs we are learning are:  th, sh, ch, wh and ck.  We are learning them through tapping out words, using them in sentences and through dictation. 

In writing we are working on bringing our stories to "Life".  We talked about unfreezing our characters.  To do this we can make them move in our writing and pictures or we can make them talk.  We also talked about taking small steps.  This means that as writers we don't just want to write, I ate my dinner.  We want to take small steps and stretch out that moment describing what we had, how we felt as we were getting ready to eat and then how we went about eating.

In Science this week we focused on the moon and how it "seems" to change.  We talked about the different phases of the moon, how long the moon cycle is and what it is called when the moon gets bigger and what it is called when the moon gets smaller.  Ask your child what each of these are called?  I also asked students to try and take a look at the moon this weekend and see what stage it is in.

The weather is beginning to get colder. Please make sure your child is dressed appropriately when they come to school so that they have the right attire to go outside. The only time we do not go outside for recess is if it is raining or the temperatures are below zero. All other times we are going outside. There were some children who have come in from recess complaining about being cold because they did not bring a jacket to school or it was not heavy enough. Please help your child be prepared. Thank-you in advance for helping out:)

Have a wonderful weekend,
Nancy