Dear Parents,
Thanks you for visiting the blog today! We have had an amazing 1st full week of school. We are settling nicely into our daily routine and the children seem to be enjoying getting to know one another. I am so proud of their maturity and willingness to embrace this new independence that is expected of them this year. We begin and end each day with smiles and hugs, so I hope your child feels like our classroom is a safe and secure environment. That is key to success!
Below, you will find what we have been doing throughout our busy days. Make sure you check out the "Classroom News and Reminders" section at the bottom for important information! Also, encourage your child to vote on our new class poll.
Phonics: We quickly reviewed all the beginning consonant sounds this week. We also began working in our Words Their Way notebooks. We sorted words according to beginning sounds. We also had fun on the smartboard, searching for certain words in a poem. We continued our skill of segmenting words to help our spelling and reading.
Reading: We read our first chapter book, The Absent Author. We talked about "genres" of stories. We also began discussing literary elements (characters, setting, events). The children were so excited to listen to this story. It was great to see their enthusiasm. We will be reading various genres of several book series over the next few weeks. My goal is to peak the children's interest in a certain genre, and then guide them to reading the other books in that series. I worked with students one-on-one this week to administer several preassessments to help me understand their strengths and weaknesses as well.
Writing: We discussed the importance of using a graphic organizer to plan when we write. We read the book The Important Book, organized our thoughts on a 4-square, wrote a paragraph, and briefly talked about ways to improve our writing. We also began writing in our journals this week. We will begin learning specific characteristics of narrative writing in the coming weeks, and the children will have many writing opportunities with this style of writing.
Math: We graphed our birthdays and looked at how information is displayed in a graph. We flexed our creative muscles this week as well! We read the book, Ten Black Dots, then made our own version of this book entitled Five Blue Dots. I loved looking at the illustrations in these books!
Classroom News and Reminders:
Homework officially begins on Monday! Your child will have a FULL blue folder that day, containing an explanation of the hw, a "Phonics Focus" list of optional activities for you to do with your child, and a weekly hw calendar stapled to the sheets that need to be returned to school on Friday.
The kids are doing an awesome job reading! Update the reading log daily, but please try and only use one row per night (This will help with our paper limitations!)
If you choose not to participate in the Coupon Card fundraiser, please return the packet to school.
I will be making home phone calls next week, just to briefly touch base with you and see if you have any questions or concerns. I will be going over our daily schedule, classroom management system, and curriculum in depth at Open House on September 2nd, but I would just like to have a short conversation with you before then.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
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