Week in Review--Getting to Know You!

Reading:

In reading this week, we continued to build our reading stamina. Our goal is to be able to make it around 15 minutes a couple of times before we move on to our next choice, which will be Work on Writing. I am happy to report the class made it to 15 minutes one time this week and the other times were between 12-14 minutes as well! I am excited to have the class reading independently so quickly in the year! At this point in the year they are mainly practicing reading the pictures in the books, creating their own stories, looking at the letters in words on the pages and finding ones they know. We will slowly but surely start reading the words we find in books. We are on our way to becoming readers! Next week, we will be combining our continued learning of Read to Self with Work on Writing stamina. I have no doubt they will do great things with this second choice! We also focused on the five vowels in the alphabet and the two sounds they make. They are called hard workers because they can make two different sounds in words. Sometimes they say their sound and other times they might say their name instead.  

Poem of the Week:

Every week we have a poem we practice reading every day and complete several other activities to help build our reading fluency. On Fridays, the students perform the poem as a celebration for all of their hard work throughout the week!

Writing:

This week we began to focus on writing specific letters in the alphabet. The letters this week were Ll, Ii, Tt, Oo and Aa. Everyday we go through an alphabet chart, sing a song all about that specific letter, trace a letter page with the uppercase and lowercase letter and complete another activity or craft that goes along with the letter. We love learning what each new letter will be everyday!

Math:

We learned numbers 1-8 this week! We talked about how during math time every single day we will complete an activity called “Number of the Day”. Sometimes we will know the number we are working with and other times we will roll one or two dice to figure out the number. We start the year off by writing the number, number word, draw the dice and draw as many shapes as the number we have on the board. We drew triangles, circles, squares and rectangles. Keep practicing writing numbers and shapes at home, we will be doing this activity every single day. As the year goes on we will add more and more to the number of the day. We will add addition and subtraction, tally marks and more!

Something Extra:

On Monday this past week we took an assessment called the NWEA (Northwest Evaluation Assessment) on iPads. This test is given to K-5 in all TSC schools and measures students growth and needs. The data from the test helps aid with instruction and helps maximize every learners growth. The test is given at the beginning, middle and end of the year. They take two tests, one is for math and one is for reading. We will take the reading test this coming Monday.

Content:

This week was all about the Getting to Know You!

• Monday--We took birthday pictures for our birthday board with friends who have a birthday in the same month!
• Tuesday--We completed an activity where we each had a turn to roll a foam dice and whatever number it landed on went with a specific question we had to answer to get to know one another more!
• Wednesday--We completed a similar activity to Tuesday, but this time we pulled a Starburst out of the bucket and whatever color it was went with a specific question to answer. Bonus...we got to eat the candy after we shared!
• Thursday--We created an iMovie as a class and described something we love and put the iMovie together by adding the videos, adding text and animation! Be sure to watch the video below!
• Friday--We shared our “All About Me” bags. It was so much fun hearing the neat things each student brought to share to tell us a little more about them. Thank you for taking the time to fill these bags with your child. Their faces lighting up when it was their turn to share was so sweet!

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Have your child practice writing his/her name. The first letter should be capitalized and the rest should be lower case. Be sure they are in the right order. Several students are mixing their letters up! *Bonus* try writing numbers and shapes too!

Next Week:

• In reading we will continue building Read to Self stamina and begin building Work on Writing stamina, as well as focusing in on the consonants in the alphabet.
• In writing we will continue learning a letter every day!
• In math we will continue to learn and practice numbers 1-10 as well as counting objects!
• Our theme next week is all about the Alphabet and our names!

Important Dates/Information:

• 9/5 Labor Day NO SCHOOL
• 9/19 School Pictures
• 9/22 Field Trip to Exploration Acres (more information to come)
• 9/29 Author Visit
• 10/14 End of 1st Nine Weeks
• Week of 10/16-10/18 Parent/Teacher Conferences