Week in Review--COLORS Week!

This week's poem was called "A Little Ball". We enjoyed reading the poem in silly voices, doing the motions and taking turns reading it all by ourselves!

Reading:

-Our sight word this week was the word “A/a”!

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

“CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING”

Even as an adult reader, there are times when I am reading a story and I get lost and am not sure what has happened. Fortunately, when this happens, I have strategies I use to help me understand the story. The same thing happens when children read. However, with children they often keep reading and do not realize they lost comprehension until the end of the story. They are too concerned with reading accurately, and forget to take the time to think about what they are reading. How can we help them gain comprehension? We can teach them the comprehension strategy: check for understanding because good readers stop frequently to check for understanding or to ask who and what.

 

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

1.     When reading to your child, stop periodically and say, “Let’s see if we remember what I just read. Think about who the story was about and what happened.” Do this 3 or 4 times throughout the story.

2.     When reading to your child, stop and have them practice checking for understanding by saying, “I heard you say…”

3.     Ask your child the following questions:

--Who did you just read about?

--What just happened?

--Was your brain talking to you while you read?

--Do you understand what was read?

--What do you do if you don’t remember?

--Another new item we added this week was a new choice during Daily 5 called "Read to Someone". This choice is a favorite of most students because they choose a partner and take turns sharing and reading the books in their book boxes with that partner!








--We practiced matching beginning sounds of pictures to other pictures that have that same beginning sound!




--We also matched our lower case letters to the upper case letters!











--We finished the week off by learning how to shop for a new book from our classroom library! We begin shopping for new books independently starting Monday! Once we get the "hang" of that, we will then move to learning how to shop for a new book from our leveled library!

Writing:

-We finished writing all of our individual letters of the alphabet! Taking the time at the beginning of the year to focus on each letter and how to correctly form them not only provides for practice in handwriting but also adds confidence to each child before beginning to write words and sentences. We finished the week painting our names by tracing them and then painting them on our own!

Math:

-This week in math we focused on writing our numbers 1-6 and showing multiple ways of creating that number. We wrote the number, wrote the number word, drew that number of shapes, tally marks, began a number line and discussed what the number looks like on a ten frame. Each student completed each of these steps on individual white boards, while I wrote it up front.

-The students also had a chance to explore creating 2D shapes using a geo board and a rubber band!

Content:
This week was all about COLORS! We had a great week dressing up in a different color each day, singing songs, coloring pictures, writing color words and searching for the specific colors around the room and school. Throughout the week we focused on reading a specific selection of books about Pete the Cat. Some of our favorites were Pete the Cat, I Love My White Shoes and Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons. We read many more, but those were two of our favorites! On Friday, we completed a Pete the Cat activity where we wrote a sentence and colored a picture to go along with our very own Pete and our favorite color of school shoes!

RED DAY!

BLUE DAY!

GREEN DAY!

YELLOW DAY!

PURPLE DAY (would not upload, so sorry!)

Next week:

• In writing, we will begin discussing what our Writer’s Workshop block of time will be and will begin to practice.
• In math, we will finish numbers up to ten and writing ways to show that number, as well as begin Daily 5 Math.
• In reading, we will focus on letter sounds and a new CAFÉ strategy!
• Our theme next week is an author study on Mo Willems. Please send in an empty toilet paper roll for your child to complete an activity on Friday afternoon. You can send it in BEFORE Friday!

PRACTICE AT HOME:

 

Practice writing numbers 1-10 at home! We have only really practiced 1-6, but you can encourage your child to practice above those numbers. Have them show you how many circles, squares, rectangles or triangles each number is or have your child practice writing the number in tally marks! Our chant we sing to go along with tally marks is “1 2 3 4 number 5 shuts the door, 6 7 8 9 number 10 draws the line!”