Week in Review--Nocturnal Animals Week!

Math:

-We started to practice addition up through 5 this week. We will have this as a choice during Math with Someone. The students are allowed to use a number line or manipulatives to help them for the time being. Eventually those items will be removed and the students will need to know the facts by heart. I will be sending home addition flash cards with your child next week to practice at home.

-We have two new choices during Daily 5 Math this week. A new choice at Math with Someone is a memory game that helps with number recognition, counting and addition! The second new choice is for Math by Myself. This choice has the students practicing drawing their 2d shapes…square, circle, triangle , rectangle and hexagon.

Writing:

-We focused on several items this week during our Writer’s Workshop. The first mini-lesson this week was all about noodle and meatball spaces. It’s important for students to learn to add spaces in between their words when writing. If they do not have spaces, it makes their writing hard to read. We use a visual item to help students with this skill. Each student has a fork with a meatball on the end where the student places the meatball after each word to give a space before they write the second word. We also introduced our new writing goals and each student was given a specific goal to work on during both their independent writing, as well as when they are working with the teacher. One other lesson this week focused on adding middle sounds to our words by using one of our vowels. By adding a vowel to a word it automatically helps the word become easier to read, even if the vowel the student chooses is incorrect, it will help the reader get an idea of what the writer was writing.

Reading:

-We started TWO sight words this week-- “now, are”.

-The CAFÉ strategy we worked on this week was the strategy.

 “Respond to Questions About the Story”

Learning to ask questions before, during and after a story is an important reading strategy because it teaches the reader to think out loud. It helps readers review important details throughout the story, make connections and refine predictions.

How can you help your child with this strategy at home?

1.    1. Model asking questions throughout the story by stopping during the reading to question what is going on in the text. Use questions such as:

                 -“What does this mean?”

                 -“Is this important?”

                 -“How do I think this story will end?”

                 -“What does this word mean?

                 -“Do I need to read this again?”

2. Then have your child practice asking questions independently.

2.     Preselect several stopping points in a text to stop and ask questions. Have your child verbalize questions out loud.

3.     Encourage your child to even write down the questions as they read.'

Content:

We learned all about nocturnal animals this week. We focused specifically on bats and owls. We read several books and completed many fun projects. We read along and put all the characters in our very own “old lady” that swallowed a bat, owl, cat, ghost, goblin, bones and wizard! We also wrote a predictable chart about facts we learned on owls, read a mini bat book, watched bat and owl videos, made an owl puppet and turned ourselves into bats flying at night!











Other:

We had a FANTASTIC time at our second Parent University. This night was all about our writing workshop! Below are pictures from our night and a video we showed the families who were there explaining our writing workshop block of time. I hope to see more families at our third and final Parent University in the spring!