Thursday, November 19, 2015

Week of November 16, 2015

Letter of the Week:  
This week we will be working on the letter Ss.

Star Word:
she
said
The star word and the letter person worksheet were sent home on Monday in your child's red folder.

 Skills  
We are now working on Unit 4 in our Skills program. Students are doing really well with blending sounds together to make a word, and we are now learning how to stretch a word to hear all of its sounds. This is a harder skill that will take some time for most students to become comfortable with but they are doing great as a whole group! Every day we sound out 2 & 3 sound words. We are working on sounding out 4 sound words.
Letter that have been introduced so far in Unit 4:
n, h, s, f, v, zWords students should be able to read and write are: 
did, tag, tad, mad, dad, did, dim, it, at, cat, mat, dig, dog, van, fan, sat, sip, fit, fog, hog, not, an, man, can, tan, fin, tin, if, zit, zag, zig, sag, sad, oz, hit, hot

We are also focusing on handwriting during skills. A few days a week we write sentences together as the teachers walk around and make sure all students are bumping the lines, spacing out their words and making the letters close together in a word. The students are loving the sentences and at this point in the year, it is done with a teacher modeling at the board. :)

Centers
We will post pictures throughout the week to show you what your child has been working on.
As you start to see some of the games and activities, talk to your child about what they were doing in  each center. 
Centers for this period:
Listening Center: The book called, The Ugly Duckling
Reading and Writing Center: Making a book for the word, "said"
Game Center: Word/ Letter Hunt 
Graphing: Sorting flat figures by their similar characteristics, tally & graphing "ex. four sides that are straight (rectangles), three sides (triangle)..."










Reading Centers 







Writing & Reading
In writing we will continue our Over the Weekend writing. I will model thinking about what I did over the weekend and putting the sounds I hear onto the paper. There will be different levels of writing occurring in the classroom. Some students will be able to add details to their picture, adding more sounds to a word, adding more words to their sentences and some will now work on adding punctuation to their sentences. Each student is getting what they need by a teacher sitting side-by-side and giving advice as to how they can make their writing even better.
We always start with a positive, "Wow, you really worked hard on..." Then we start to teach a skill, "Great writers also..." we model, "Let me show you..." and then we say, "Now you try...". This is a good way to work with your child at home. This is how we teach our writing/ reading lessons in class, whether it is whole group, small group or 1:1. 

In reading we are continuing to use picture clues to help us with our reading. We will also read quite a few rhyming books to become confident with our ability to rhyme words. We are good with simple rhymes like: cat, mat.. rap, tap... but need to work on words like: switch, twitch...  match, patch... play, May...

Try and find some rhyming books at the library and have your child finish sentences that include rhyming words! When we do this in class, everyone gets a kick out of thinking of a word that rhymes and makes sense in the sentence! We read, Rhyming Dust Bunnies on Monday last week and you should have heard them laughing. They thought the book was hilarious!!

As always, reading at home every night is encouraged.
Thank you!

Math  
This week we will start Unit 2 in our modules. All of the students did really well with numbers to 10. We will continue to practice forming these numbers this week as well as working on shapes.
Your child will have several discussions about shapes this week. Before we "name" a shape, we will describe it. I need all students to understand that a flat shape is a shape that does not have any openings. If a shape is not connected on all sides, then it is not considered a flat shape.
Within the lessons, students will be able to look around the room for each shape and draw the shape on a clipboard as they find it. We might bring this activity into the hallways to make it a little more enjoyable. Students will also make different shapes on their own personal geoboard. We will see if we can make shapes: bigger, smaller, longer, shorter, wider, thinner...
The shapes students will learn (or describe) this week are: rectangles, triangles, circles and hexagons.

 Farms
When students are finished with their work throughout the day, they are able to work on a farming center. They are really loving this new choice. Every child is choosing what they are interested in, and it's also giving me valuable information about their interests. I love to see what children pick when given a choice. Their choices range from: math worksheets, tangrams (making animals), books, coloring pages to reading books about different farm animals.
We have learned about tools on the farm, equipment, the role of the farmer and cows. Students learned that a calf is a baby cow last week. We will be making a cow craft sometime this week.
We will also learn about pigs, and chickens. 

Vocabulary your child will be introduced to: 
crops, harvest, pasture, calf, produce, grazing, calf, bull, hen, rooster, chick, peck...

We do not expect students to master all of this vocabulary, but it is important that they are exposed to this language. They will now have the prior knowledge that is necessary to gain mastery in future grade levels.



Thank you for visiting our blog!
Have a Super week!
:) 

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