Week in Review--Getting to Know You!

Every week the class has a poem to read and practice both at school and at home. This was our first poem of the year! On Friday's everyone who turns their poem in with all four signatures from the week performs in front of the class, receives a sticker, four M&M's and a GREAT big hug from me! It's amazing to see the improvement from this very first poem performance to the last one of the year!

Reading:

-Our sight word this week was the word “I”!

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

“Retell Familiar Stories”

Retelling the story is a comprehension strategy used to help readers recall what is happening in the story. It involves telling what is important in the story without telling too much. The most effective way to teach retelling is through modeling and practice. Model this strategy for your students and then allow them to practice. There are many ways to enhance learning for the strategy of retelling, here are a few:

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

1. Introduce the Retell Rope described on the ready reference guide in the back of the CAFE book. This strategy provides a visual and kinesthetic reminder for children to help them focus on the strategy being learned.

2. After a brief reminder on what it means to be a good listener, allow students to practice this strategy by sharing a retelling of a story with a partner. Partners should listen to the retelling carefully, prompting with questions about the characters, setting, problem, events, or solution if needed.

3. Make this strategy fun by allowing children to use small props or puppets when retelling their story.

Math:

-This week in math, we focused on our numbers 1-5 at the beginning of the week, 6-10 in the middle of the week and practiced with all of our numbers 1-10 at the end of the week. We learned rhymes to go with each number to help us recognize, as well as write the numbers. We will continue to practice with these numbers and up to 20 throughout the rest of the school year. We also practiced counting as high as we could as a class. We made it to 34! By the end of the year we will make it to 100!

Writing:

-This week we started practicing writing the both the uppercase and lowercase letters in the alphabet. We will continue to practice writing these letters until we have completed all 26! Before we independently go out to practice the letters, we watched a video created by Have Fun Teaching for each letter of the alphabet. The class enjoyed dancing, singing and doing the motions for each letter before going to write them on their own!

 

-We also completed our first writing prompt for the school year that will be graded and then compared to a post test writing prompt at the end of our first writing unit. This first prompt was "Write and draw about something you love." We first brainstormed a list of things we love to give the class an idea of what to write/draw about. Then they went back to their seats and got started writing and drawing! I am excited to see the progress each student makes when it comes to writing after we complete our first writing unit!

Content:
-We have continued our learning into our second week of school. This week we focused on a theme of “Getting to Know You”. We worked all week on getting to know our new friends and what makes them special. We shared our names, favorite animals, favorite colors and an “ALL ABOUT ME” bag. We learned that a lot of students like cats and cheetahs, the color red and have wonderful families who they love to share and talk about!













Other:
-We started a new "sign in" page at the beginning of our day. Each student has to "sign in" as part of their morning job/routine. This is allowing for extra practice writing each student's name. Some students are already experts at their name, but everyone can always use practice!

   

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Have your child write his/her name AND practice their lunch number! You can also start to quiz your child on numbers you see around the house (remote control, toys…), while driving (speed limit signs, billboards…) and encourage them to count as high as they can without skipping any numbers! The goal is to be able to count to 25 by the end of the first nine weeks.

Next week:

 

-In writing, we will continue practicing a different letter of the alphabet each day until we are through all 26 letters!

-In math, we will focus on shapes all week!

-In reading, we will continue to practice building our stamina for Read to Self and start a new choice, Work on Writing.

-Our theme next week is “ABC’s”.