Week of January 18, 2016______________‘s

Reading Log & Newsletter

Today I read with… Comments…

IMPORTANT DATES and REMINDERS:

Reading at home (for even just a few minutes a day)

can increase a child’s success in school.

Please help your child remember their snow gear

each day.

Newsletters are uploaded to my website for your

reference.

Thank you for getting the kids’ How To books back to school! Sharing with Mrs. Hunt’s class was a

big success!

Wednesday, January 27th

will be an EARLY RELEASE day.

What did we learn last week?

Please remember that I dismiss the kids from the back of our classroom instead of with the other walkers. You can park behind the school and walk across the

playground.

Our door is the blue one! Now that the winter weather is here, the kids will be watching for you and one of them will open the door as you approach.

Thank you for passing this information on to anyone who is picking your child up.

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Week of January 18, 2016

Math: Our focus last week was on subtraction to 20. Students learned to notice both the tens and the ones when subtracting larger numbers. We used manipulatives, played games and did some practice pages to increase our understanding of this concept. We also had our AIMSWEB testing this week, which is our district’s standardized testing for first graders, so if your child mentioned going with a Math teacher, that is why! Word Study: Our Word Study focused on reinforcing “magic e” and looking at “ea” and “ee” spelling patterns. The kids quickly saw that all three spelling patterns create a long e sound. We found these spelling patterns in our Morning Messages, watched a fun youtube video about the concept and began applying our new knowledge to our reading and writing. Each student got their new personal sort which we will continue to work with into this week.

Reader’s Workshop: AIMSWEB has a reading component as well, so the kids each worked briefly with a reading teacher this week. We wrapped up our nonfiction reading unit last week. Our focus was on becoming “experts at reading aloud”. Students learned that the things we read can evoke emotions which we can express with our voices and that looking at how a book is organized helps you decide how to use your voice and actions to communicate the information to your listener. We learned that not only do we need to notice key words, but we should be able to explain them as well. This is big work, but it is the beginning of using reading as a catalyst to learning instead of just learning how to read. The kids each choose their favorite nonfiction book and practiced using all these new skills over the course of the week. On Friday, we drew names to get a mystery partner and showed off our expert reading skills!

Writer’s Workshop: Monday we veered away from our usual writing to practice responding to reading. I read aloud Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner and we talked about what we thought snowmen would do at night. The kids then wrote their own thoughts and created a torn paper snowman. Tuesday we dove back into informational writing with an introduction to “All About” writing. We learned to choose topics that we know a lot about and to plan our writing before we begin. Students also learned that thinking about the questions our reader may have can help us find places to add more into our work.

Social Studies/Science: We continued reading the Chickadee Award books to prepare for our vote today in Library class. Firefighter Josh came for a Fire Safety lesson and brought Red E. Fox along to teach us about calling 911 in an emergency. We also read three books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and watched a BrainPopJr video to help us begin to understand who he was and why we have a day off in his honor. The kids had a lot of insightful questions about this big topic, so you may consider following up with them at home.

We loved having Red E. Fox visit our classroom!