August 24, 2012 Update

Dear Parents,

Okay, I have to brag on your children for a minute!  I have had the absolute best start to a school year that I have ever had! Your children are working hard and giving me 100% when they come through my door. They are working so hard, we all passed our spelling pre-test!  What does this mean?  This means I am not going to waste your child's time going over words they already know how to read and spell!  Look for a new list on Monday. Our units will be two weeks long unless we have the majority of the class passing the pre-test.  If you were unable to view the first web cast, you can find it in the previous post. It will be up for one more week.  I also need to clarify a few questions I have had about our O.S.C.A.R.S club.  This is intended to CHALLENGE your child. The activities are not supposed to be easy, nor are they supposed to be learned in a matter of one or two nights.  All activities must be tested here at school, not brought in already complete from home. I also put activities with a range of difficulty to specifically target the students in our class.  If your child memorizes well and is very studious (ie, is in Target), please encourage your child to pick an activity that will challenge him/her.  If your child is lacking confidence in school and needs lots of time to memorize things, choose an activity that is easier and one that he/she can have success with.  You know your child better than anyone, so make this time meaningful. Our AR goals begin next week. Your child must take and PASS three AR books each week. This should absolutely be a cinch for every child. Each morning the children are given time for library, tests, and reading. 

Check out what else we've been doing in class this week...

Phonics/Spelling:  We took a pretest on our first list of words.  We practiced learning the -ck rule in spelling.  We played sparkle to help us memorize.

Writing:  We began our unit on narratives. We learned how to "hook" our reader's interest with an enticing first sentence. We also learned how to write a topic sentence.  We used transition phrases to help us keep our story written in chronological order.  We learned how to begin varying our sentence patterns when writing to make our writing more interesting. We began our first narrative story, learning about writing "small moments" instead of stories that are very long but contain little detail.

Math:  We continued our unit on numbers in base ten.  We learned four ways to represent numbers (written form, base ten form, expanded form, place value form).  We learned how to compare numbers by looking at the value of the largest place first, then going down from there. We played a game called "Triple War" to help us learn how to create the largest number possible from three digits then compare to other three digit numbers.  We also learned how to play a game called "Guess My Number" which challenge us to really think about digits, places, and values. We learned how to "decompose" a number to help us understand it better in preparation for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

Reading: This week, we learned about character traits to help us find deeper meaning in the stories.  We also talked about inferring by way of character's actions or character's words in stories. We read from our chapter book, The Bad Beginning.  We also read the story, Ruby Bridges, and talked about the non-fiction genre.  We compared this story to Ruby the Copycat, which is a realistic fiction story.  One-on-one, we worked on individual reading strategies such as fluency, checking for understanding when reading, and self-monitoring our choices of books (is the level a "good fit"?)

Science: We "adopted" a tree to watch and study over the course of the year.  We identified the tree by its leaves and then illustrated the bark, branches, ground underneath, and leaves. We put on our scientists' hats and wrote a descriptive entry in our "tree journals".

Class Notes and Important Information...

Thank you, Mrs. Abrams, for coming in to our class and taking pictures of all of us for our class directory!  My cell phone number will be in there for you as well!

Thank you for all the class donations that keep coming in!

Great job, parents, helping to keep your child organized with all the materials that have been coming home for our special homework projects!  I've gotten all the cards and bead bracelets back! Yeah!

 Be sure to sign your child's agenda nightly.  This is where I will write any notes to you and you can also write to me any concerns or questions.  I check the agendas every single morning. 

Strikes: If your child earns a strike, I will put a number and letter code by it. You can find a description of these codes in the back plastic cover of your child's G.O. notebook. Our first official "fun friday" is next week. No more than two strikes are allowed each week.