Week in Review--Community Helpers!

Our poem this week was exciting because it was a little different than our usual weekly poem. This poem only had two mystery words and instead of reading the poem, we were able to sing it!

Reading:

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

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

“Use Text Features”

Often times when reading various texts, we often see bold words, labels, headings and other text features that make certain words stand out. Text features can also be glossaries, index and captions, as well as changing the color of text within a piece. These text features are important parts of text because they tell a reader important information regarding the words that standout because the author wants the reader to focus on those words for one reason or another to gather information about the text.

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

  --While reading a story, a menu at a restaurant or even a billboard sign, discuss how the text is shown and why the author from chose to create the words in that way.

--Encourage your child to discuss parts of a picture that could have labels added to it to encourage a greater meaning for the page.

-- Have your child highlight specific words when reading the sight word book, newspapers, magazines and so forth at home that they know in order to have them standout.

--We started shopping for books for our book boxes from our leveled library this week. Each student knows which basket he/she should choose books from at their reading level and they now have more books in their book boxes that they can read the words and practice the reading strategy they are working on with me during conferring session!







































--We are gearing up to use our classroom iPads! This week we brainstormed a list of "do's and don'ts" when using the iPads. 

Writing:

-This week in writing we practiced adding details with pictures and writing to previously written pieces. We also reviewed writing unknown words by focusing on just the beginning and ending sounds you hear in the word. Each student used a whiteboard and we went through picture cards, said the word of the picture and wrote down the beginning and ending sound from that word.

-In writing groups, most groups are working on adding those beginning and ending sounds, drawing a detailed picture using shapes and correct colors, as well as using various words to begin your sentences instead of focusing only on “I like….” sentences.

Math:

-Math this week focused on counting objects focusing on one to one correspondence of numbers 1-20. We practiced counting objects individually and using a new iPad app called Tally Tots. When we focus on counting we pay attention to counting slowly but not too slow. We want to make sure that we are counting at the same speed we are moving objects. It is also important to move the objects to a new pile so items are not counted more than once. We focused on counting various amounts from 1-20. 

Content:

This week was all about Community Helpers. We learned about our community, our neighborhoods, strangers, jobs in the community and why all of these things are important. We shared what each student wants to be when he/she grows up each day. We loved hearing the three clues and guessing what job each student wants to be! We also enjoyed listening to Mrs. Brown’s brother who is a police officer talk about his job and we got to see his car! We finished the week off by creating a picture using a picture of each student and adding it to a body cutout of a community helper!