Hello families!
This 4-day school week has been lovely. Students were excited to begin a new writing project: All About Me ABC books! It can be hard to think of something about yourself for every letter of the alphabet--but these creative kids are doing an amazing job! We also began our first social studies unit about how people are the same and different and exploring our personal histories. We read a book, To Be a Kid by Maya Ajmera and John D. Ivanko, that showed how kids all over the world have things in common even if they don't do things in exactly the same ways.
Our Literacy Block is running very smoothly. Each morning children get to choose how they want to practice their literacy skills that day--read to self, partner reading, word work, free writing, or listen to reading (audio picture books). Meanwhile I'm able to meet with 3 groups of readers each day to practice reading strategies, learn sight words, teach about different spelling patterns they will see in their reading, and practice using comprehension strategies while we read. Students also made mini-strategy sheets to bring home for reference during daily 20 minute reading homework. This reading homework is a school-wide expectation. During this 20 minutes a night your child can read to you, you can read to your child and discuss a higher level text than they can read on their own, or you can take turns reading a book together. Practicing sight words in the booklets I sent home is also great practice during this time. Children who practice their reading skills at home, as well as at school, benefit greatly from this experience.
Second grade mathematicians have been working with groups of ten and noticing patterns about how groups of ten correlate to the whole number (i.e. 5 tens is 50, 13 tens is 130). We'll continue building on this concept as we are building our solid foundational knowledge of place value. We also have been using more visualization techniques to picture the missing part of an equation using our fact family knowledge. We've been working on this to help improve our fluency in subtracting in the N-1 family and Take Apart 10 family. First grade mathematicians have been using cuisenaire rods and number lines to show what they know about adding 1 to a number.
We do have quite a few coughing kiddos in our room. I've been reminding everyone to wash their hands thoroughly and often. I hope this long weekend will give you all plenty of time to rest, heal, and enjoy the sunshine too!
Dates to Remember
Friday October 7 - Teacher In-service - No School for Kids
Monday October 10 - Columbus Day - NO SCHOOL
Thursday October 13 - 4 Winds 1:30-2:40 pm
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