Celebrate, Celebrate!
First of all, I want to thank you all again for my wonderful birthday celebration last week. I so appreciated everything! You made my day so very special. Counting my birthday, we celebrated four birthdays in 6 school days! Reid, Victoria, and Jackson all celebrated turning 7 - a few years younger than me!
This week we are celebrating our accomplishments in reading and writing. We have worked hard and learned so much as readers and writers.
Last week in Writing Workshop, each child selected a piece from their writing notebooks and worked to "fix it up" for publishing. Today they shared their published stories with the class as we enjoyed our first Writing Celebration! We are writers!
Tomorrow we begin our new unit of study in Writing Workshop – Small Moments: Personal Narrative Writing. The children will learn that they can create stories out of the details of their own experiences. The opportunities that children have to take the moments of their lives and spin them into stories play an important role in their literacy development.
In Reading Workshop this week, we will be practicing several strategies to help us figure out “tricky” words. During the next several weeks, we will also be focusing on the importance of making meaning of our reading. As children work to become proficient decoders, they sometimes forget that the words they read are making a story or lose their understanding of the story as they work hard to figure out “tricky” words. We will focus on using three sources of information (meaning, syntax, and graphophonics—although we don’t use those words!) to figure out the words in books. This week we will also be celebrating all that we have learned so far as readers. Before shopping for new “just right books”, we will choose a favorite book from our book boxes and begin recording ourselves reading them on our new classroom i-pod! We love reading!
In Language Arts/Spelling, we are focusing on words with short vowel /o/. We will continue reviewing the naming and telling parts of sentences and practice identifying nouns that are found in the naming parts of sentences. When reading and writing, we work on story structure by answering the questions “who, what, where, and when”. You can help your child recognize story structure by asking questions when they read or write such as “who is the story about”, “where are they”, “what is happening”. We will also be using graphic organizers to help us recognize the story structure and summarize the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
I have begun introducing robust vocabulary (or as we call them in our class, WOW Words). The purpose of our robust vocabulary is to introduce the children to a stronger vocabulary for use when speaking, and ultimately writing. We will not focus on the spelling of these words, but rather the meaning to enrich their spoken vocabulary. This week’s robust vocabulary words are: horrible, invigorated, presented, aid, persistent, sweltering.
Please don't forget that the word card ring of sight words should be worked on (reading and spelling) daily at home and returned to school on Thursday. This week's sight words: find, thank, tree, mom, and much.
In handwriting, we continue to work on lowercase letter formations. When your child is doing homework, please encourage neatness and proper letter formation.
In math this week, we will explore the penny and nickel and work on counting combinations of them.
I'm sure you will hear about Science today! After focusing on our five senses last week, we learned all about the human eye today. Upper Division Science Teacher, Lisa Peck, brought cow eyes, which are very similar to human eyes, to dissect with the children to help them see how the eye works. We learned about the different parts of the eye and their functions. One of the interesting things we learned is that the job of the lens is to focus the light in our eye to project the image of what we see back to the optic nerve and then to our brain. Mrs. Peck removed the lenses from the cow eyes and, after they dry, we will be able to lay the lenses on a book or newspaper and look right through them to see words magnified! How cool is that? We also learned why our eyes sometimes show up red in photographs. Ask your child about that! Over the next several days we will learn all about the framework of our body – the skeleton!
Things to remember:
International Peace Day will be celebrated Wednesday morning beginning with a special Town Meeting gathering in the morning. The children may wear "peace-themed" t-shirts if they have them and uniform bottoms. You are welcome to join us at the Town Meeting gathering if you can.
Students in grades JK-2 will see "The Adventures of Stuart Little" on Friday, October 7 at 1:00 in the Janet Root Theater. You are welcome to join us.
Please send photos of your Summer Travels for possible inclusion in the 2012 yearbook. Please send your photos by this Friday, September 23rd. Email your photos to: nap@shorecrest.org.
Spirit Day is every Friday. The children may wear Charger spirit wear to school instead of uniforms.
Conference Day is October 6. There will be no school for students.
Homework should be done in pencil only. That way if there is a mistake made, it can be corrected easily. Ask your child what Mrs. Owen says about mistakes!
Please help your child learn responsibility for returning the word ring to school every Thursday. We are having difficulty getting them all back on time! Also, please have your child practice spelling the words as well as reading them.
Library books should be returned by Thursday each week. However, if your child isn't finished
Dress Code: Please remind your child that the dress code at Shorecrest requires that their “shirts are tucked in” and that “belts in a neutral color must be worn with all items that have belt loops.”
Volunteers this Week:
* Tuesday - Art – Mary Harris (12:05)
* Wednesday - Math Game – Kim Burke (1:00)
*Thursday - Library Check-out - Marion O’Mullane and Kim Burke (12:05)
* Friday - Parent Reader – Kelli Cross (2:15)
I wish everyone a peaceful week…
Susan
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