On Thursday, the 23rd, please pack your child a snack (and no lunch, as it's a 12:45 dismissal day). We'll be having a class party with a few snacks, but it won't be until around 11:45am, so we'll still have a regular snack earlier in the morning.
Last week, we watched a performance of the Winter Concert. The students had a great time, and thoroughly enjoyed watching me sing during the staff song. Unfortunately, the concert took place during the time the students should have had library, so no one was able to take out new books. Hopefully the students will be able to check out new books this week, so that they all have fun books to read over the break.
Reading : I'm so impressed with the growth and development in the students' fluency over the last couple of weeks. Fluency is a very important, but often overlooked, aspect in reading. Please help to support your child's fluency development at home by reminding your child to read with a story telling voice, whether it's out loud of to him/herself. The students really enjoy using expression and changing their voices for different characters. (The students even told me that one of the substitutes didn't read a book with a good story telling voice a couple of weeks ago!)
This week, we're going to talk about getting to know the characters in our books. We'll be talking about character traits/personalities and characters' relations to one another.
Writing : All of the students have finished writing at least one 'how-to' book, and they've come out great! Ask your child what he or she wrote about. We're going to continue the unit this week by talking about adding in sequencing words, quantities of items needed, and warnings about pitfalls or dangerous things that the reader should be aware of.
Math : The students have been really enjoying this measuring unit. I've posted some pictures below of the students helping their partners to measure This week, we'll do an exploration, during which we'll measure the students' heights. We'll also take some time to go back and review money, time, and frames and arrows problems.
Happy Holidays, to those of you celebrating holidays this month! I better go finish my shopping and baking.