Week 4

 Dear Parents,

       We will be starting the 4^th week of school next week. So far most children are getting into the routines and bringing what they need to turn in to class. Here are a few reminders:

1. Spelling lists and sight words go home on Mondays. They are assessed on Fridays.
2. Your child’s blue folder should come to school every day. This is our behavior information as well as important messages/papers between parents and myself. Make sure that if you put a paper in the blue folder you remind your child to take it out of the folder when he/she gets to the room and give it to me. I do remind the class to check the folder. Again, I am instilling a sense of responsibility.
3. Reading folders and books go home and back to school every day. There may be up to 3 books in the folder at  time. We switch out one- two books every week. Rereading familiar text is vital in establishing fluency. Your child will use these books to fill out their reading logs. They may read other books, but make sure it is a good fit book. The rule is if there are 5 or more words in a paragraph-sized page that your child can’t read, it is too hard for them to practice reading.
4. Reading logs stay in their backpacks and are filled out by your child Monday-Thursday. On Friday they turn it in for me to check.

 

                 In math this week we worked on creating and decomposing two digit numbers. We looked at a hundred’s chart and learned how to quickly add or subtract 10 from a number by getting on the number and either moving up a row or down a row. We played the game get to 100. We were introduced to the games collect $.50 and collect $1.00. We practiced filling out 100 charts and adding number strings. Please practice counting coins with your child. We start with the largest valued coin and add them in order to the least valued coin. If you had 2 dimes,  a nickel, 2 quarters and 3 pennies, your child would add: 25 + 25 + 10 + 10 +  5 + 1 + 1 + 1 = $0.78.

               In Language we are working on reading with fluency and isolating sounds in words. We are thinking, then getting our words down in complete sentences. We are using our dictionaries to help us spell words correctly. We are learning to have a beginning, middle and end in our narratives. We have started our own book using other authors as mentors. We can choose as an author/illustrator where we put our pictures and words. We can write words large or very small. We can use speech bubbles.

               In reading we read Clark the Shark, learned about setting (time and place). We took a comprehension check to see what your child remembered from our discussions. These are assessments and may be retaken for a 70. That means if your child did not get a passing grade on this assessment, they will meet with me discuss and read the story then retake the assessment. Even if they get 100% the second time, the grade marked down in the gradebook will be a 70. That paper will go home with a paper attached. Please sign the and note and send both the test and the signed note back to me.

                 In science we began our second unit called The Properties of matter. We are learning to describe objects by their properties and that everything round us that has size, shape, mass,  color or takes up space is matter.