Celebrate, Celebrate!
First of all, I want to thank
you all for my wonderful birthday celebration on Thursday. I so appreciated
everything! You made me feel so very special.
On Friday, we had our first writing celebration! During the week, each
child selected a piece from their writing notebooks and worked to
"fix it up" for publishing. On Friday, they shared their published
stories with the class and their classmates gave each writer specific
compliments on their work! Look for their published pieces in the hallway
outside our classroom. We are writers! Today in Writing Workshop, we began our new unit of study - 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.
Today during Reading Workshop, we celebrated
all that we have learned so far as readers! The children received their very
own book bins, whisper readers, and shopped for “just right books”. This week we began learning new 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.
In Word
Work this week, we are focusing on words with short vowel /o/ as in the words frog, stop, and not. We will practice making many words with the
phonograms _og, _op, and _ot. Words from these phonograms, or word families, will be on the Friday spelling test along with this week's sight words (word card words). This week's sight
words are be, as, by, will, all, ball, and too. Please don't forget that the word card ring with these sight words
came home today and should be worked on (reading and spelling) daily at
home and returned to school on Thursday.
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 today we began talking about complements of 10. We learned a game
called “Two-fisted Penny Addition” which is great practice for math facts. Also
in math this week, the children will learn about the routine of Math Boxes to
give reinforced practice of math concepts that we cover throughout the year.
We’ll also be introduced to the calculator and its functions and talk about
analog clocks as we begin to review telling time to the hour.
In Science this week we will begin our new unit on the Human Body! To kick off the unit, tomorrow we will read the book Parts by Ted Arnold. If you haven’t
read it, it is hysterical! This unit will last through the month of October as
we study the heart, brain, skeleton, muscles, skin, and so much more! This will
no doubt prove to be a favorite unit of the children. On Tuesday, I will be telling them about some
of the things we will be doing during the unit and they are sure to be as excited as I am! One of
Shorecrest’s wonderful upper school science teachers, Lisa Peck, will be
bringing sheep brains, cow hearts, eyes, and kidneys to dissect with the
children to help them learn about these parts of our bodies. I’m also
looking for any parents in the health or medical field who would like to come
in and share with us. In the past, we have had heart doctors, eye doctors, bone
doctors, nurses, etc. come visit. Please let me know as soon as possible, if
you would like to come in and share your knowledge and expertise with the
children, what you would like to share, and dates/times you could be available.
Today we read a book titled What Does Peace Feel Like? which called upon us to think about peace using our five senses. Each child decorated a die-cut image of themselves and wrote a speech bubble answering one of these questions: What does peace feel like? Look like? Smell like? Sound like? or Taste like? These will be up in in our window for International Peace Day which will be celebrated this Friday. That morning will begin with a special Town Meeting gathering. The children may wear "peace-themed" t-shirts if they have them and uniform bottoms. They will be joining in with the rest of the lower school in making a rock garden. Each child painted a rock in class today to add to the rock garden. You are welcome to join us at the Town Meeting gathering if you can.
Things to remember:
Spanish word of the week: paz which means “peace”
Although I will not be at Conference Day on October 4, there will be no school for students that day. I will be sending home a reminder of your conference date and time. Library books should be returned by Wednesday of each week.
Don't forget to check out our class Shutterfly site. I am adding a lot of pictures to it!
Volunteers this Week:
- · Wednesday- Library Check-out – Lorraine Thorpe and Heidi Joswig or David Richardson (2:10)
- · Thursday - Math Game –Donna Main (10:30)
- · Friday - Art – Sharon Cannella (9:15)
- · Friday - Parent Reader – Heidi Joswig or David Richardson (2:20)
Wishing you a peaceful week -
Susan
Susan
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