Week in Review--The Season Fall!

Reading:

-Our sight word this week was the word "am". Starting next week, we will begin working on two sight words per week until the end of the school year. Be on the lookout for two sight word pages for homework, two sight word cards to practice, but only one sight word book.

-The CAFE strategy we worked on this was the strategy:

"Retell a story in sequence. Beginning/Middle/End."

-As a beginning reader, we are just learning many new things when it comes to reading. We first begin with basic print concepts, to decoding words and comprehending what we read. Practicing the strategy of retelling a story only describing what happened in the beginning, the middle and end in the correct sequence helps students comprehend what they are reading or being read to. This skill is mainly focused on after they are read a story at first in order to practice the skill without having to focus on many other skills when reading independently. We discuss how when you tell a story to someone about something you did, you tell it in an order that makes sense. You wouldn't tell your friend about your day and begin with dinner, then breakfast and finish with lunch. You would tell them in the order the events happened!

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

1. Have your child retell a story from your own lives in a sequence. This could be a family trip to the store, how dinner is made or even your child's bedtime routine. Have your child go through each step in order from what happens in the beginning, middle and end of that situation.
2. While reading a story, stop after each point in the book where it changes from the beginning, to the middle and the end. Discuss with your child why each point is considered the beginning, middle and end. What makes you believe that the focus in changing in the story to notice it is now the middle and the end?
3. Have your child pick a favorite book from home that they love to read all of the time. Encourage them to retell a friend, family member or even a pet what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story!

Math:

-This week in math we said goodbye to a few of our choices in Number Work and Math by Myself, and were introduced to two new items! One for Number Work and the other Math with Someone! The two new choices are creating numbers 1-20 using pattern blocks and the second one is practicing counting with a partner using a stuffed animal.
-During our whole group mini-lessons, we focused on sorting by shape! Last nine weeks our focus was sorting objects by color and this nine weeks we are working on sorting by shape. The students will be able to practice this choice at a Math by Myself next week.

Writing:
-This week in writing we began the week by practicing writing middle sounds in unknown words. When writing these words we followed a chart that helped us remember to "say it like a turtle, stretch it like a snack and write the sounds you hear." The class loved this strategy because they were able to relate to the idea of saying it slowing and stretching it out. The main focus is to write the beginning sound, a middle sound and an ending sound. There should only be 3-4 letters written for a word when writing phonetically at the beginning.
-Another mini-lesson this week focused on using our word wall words. These words are made up of our sight words that we practice in reading every week. These words are words that should be written correctly every time. In order to practice writing these words, we followed a chart that helped us practice looking at the word, take a picture of the word, write the word and after writing the word check that you wrote the word correctly by looking back to the wall. We practiced this by choosing a word and using our hands to pretend to hold up a camera to take a mental picture.













Content:
-This week was all about the season Fall! We started the week off by filling in a chart of things that reminded us of fall, as well as things we already know about fall. One of the favorites was jumping in leaves! We also talked about carving pumpkins, eating apple and pumpkin pie and going trick or treating as some of our favorite things from this season!
-We continued the week by going on a leaf hunt around our school where we focused on finding different types of leaves. We wanted to find crunchy, soft, different shapes, colors and sizes to fill our bags! We then used those leaves to sort and describe what we found and created leaf rubbings with one or more of them! 

Next week:

--In writing, we will be focusing on labeling items around the room & learning about narrative writing.

--In math, we will be learning 3D shapes!

--In reading, we will focus on analyzing characters!

--Our theme this next week is all spiders and Halloween!

--This is my last week in the classroom. My maternity leave will begin next week. Mrs. Michelle Stevens will be taking the classroom over. I’m excited for the class to have such a wonderful teacher to love in my absence! 

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Have your child practice writing our sight words. Have your child pretend to take a picture of the word, write it down somewhere and look back to see if they got it correct! this skill will focus on being able to take a mental picture to help them remember what the word looks like!