I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed the week together with your loved ones. I had a wonderful long weekend with my children and grandson but was so sad when they left Sunday. I miss them so much! The house is too quiet now. My words of advice to you... enjoy these days while your children are young and living with you. Treasure every moment!
We finished reading our class novel, Charlotte's Web, the week before Thanksgiving break. That Thursday, we got together with our third grade buddies in Mrs. Hensler's class for another activity. This time the partnerships each chose a setting from the story and completed a diarama to show that setting complete with characters and scenery. They worked so well together in their cooperative partnerships! Their diaramas are amazing and will come home before the winter break.
In language arts, our spelling focus this week is on the r-controlled vowel /ar/ as in "farm". We are also practicing adding the inflections -s, -ed, and -ing to words. We will also practice writing the names of holidays and remembering that they begin with capital letters. Our wall words this week are again, feel, house, know, loud, Mrs., put, and say.
During Reading Workshop, we will talk about ways that smart readers help themselves understand what they read... such as stopping and rereading slowly, studying th
e pictures, and asking themselves "What's going on in the story? and What is the author's purpose?" We will also use sticky notes to mark places that make us "think" in our books.Last week we had our second writing celebration in which the children shared their stories. They gave each other such wonderful compliments as writers! In our new and third unit of Writing Workshop, we are talking about the importance of conventions to make our writing more readable. Today we made a list of what makes writing "easy to read" and we reread all of the stories we have in our notebooks and sorted them into "easy to read writing" and "not so easy to read writing". During this unit we will put a spotlight on things such as the proper case of letters, using correct spacing, appropriate punctuation, neatness, and spelling both high frequency and unknown words. We continue to write about the "small moments" in our lives. Encourage your child to tell you the stories of his or her day no matter where those moments occur... at home, at school, at soccer. Tell him or her, "You should write about that!"
In math, we will work more with measurement, including the ruler, tape measure, and measuring temperature. We will also begin practicing telling time to the quarter hour. We will begin making our number scrolls, so please send in the empty and CLEAN Pringles can this week if you have not done so.
In science, we began our new unit on the Solar System today! This week we will be talking about what makes day and night, why we have seasons, and learning about largest star in our solar system, the sun. We will need a few items for special projects during this unit. Please send in a 4 inch styrofoam ball, an empty toilet tissue tube, and any scraps of sandpaper that you may have. We don't need much sandpaper so please don't worry about buying any. We need to have these in by next Monday. Thank you! I am sure that this will prove to be another exciting unit for the children!
Other Important Events:
The gift drive began this week and ends December 9. You should have received information regarding details of the family our class is helping. There are two bins in our hallway to collect the gifts. What a great way to help our children learn the "gift of giving"!
The first grade Pajama Party will take place on Friday, December 16th. We will begin with a breakfast buffet! All parents are welcome to join us - in your jammies, too! This will no doubt be a favorite day of the year!
The Lower Division Holiday Sing Along will also take place that day at 11:00. Dismissal will be at noon.
Volunteers This Week:
- Tuesday - Art - 12:00 - Debbie Boensch
- Wednesday - Math Game - 1:00 - Susannah Malison
- Thursday - Library Checkout - 12:00 - Kimberly Burke and Ana Brinkley
- Friday - Parent Reader - 2:15 - Jill Emerson
Enjoy the cool weather this week!
Susan
No comments:
Post a Comment