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!

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!