We also had a presentation from CAP on Wednesday, which you received a letter home about. The students learned about their rights to be safe, strong, and free. On Friday, we had an assembly during which Jill Santopolo (a children's book author) told us all about how she became a published author.
I look forward to meeting with many of you for your child's parent/teacher conference this week. Please remember that Tuesday, March 11th and Thursday, March 13th are 12:45pm dismissal days.
Here's what we've been working on in the classroom:
Reading : The students are really enjoying our new nonfiction unit. We've been talking a lot about the differences between fiction and nonfiction texts. Often times in nonfiction texts, information can be gleaned from much more than just the text itself. Therefore, we have to pay careful attention to how we read and gather information from nonfiction texts. We are spending time going through the various types of conventions that show up in nonfiction books and learning about how to gather information from them. So far, we've gone over the table of contents, labels, photographs, and captions.
When you're reading with your child at home, pay careful attention to vary the genre of books that you read. Make sure to include some nonfiction literature based on your child's interests. Also, please note that nonfiction texts are much tougher for many students to comprehend that fiction texts.
Writing : The students did a great job with our opinion unit. During this unit, we used graphic organizers to organize the students' thoughts before they wrote their pieces. The graphic organizers also helped the students to use a proper writing format for an opinion piece - stating their opinion, giving three reasons to support their opinion, and then closing their piece with their opinion again.
During this unit, we also spent time going over what makes writing 'easy to read.' Now that many of the students have gotten the hang of writing, it is important that they start to use proper writing conventions like capital letters and periods. At home, you can help support this by reminding your child to use capital letters and periods when they write their sentences for their world wall homework.
Math : We wrapped up unit 5 and started unit 6. The focus of unit 6 is to continue to develop the students' fact power. While I don't expect the students to have all of their math facts memorized, they should be secure with their easy basic facts at this point (+0 and +2). Keep practicing at home!
Social Studies : We've just started a multicultural unit, which will be loosely based off many of the backgrounds of students in 1-Bu. Thanks for working with your child at home to help him/her complete his/her doll.
Here are some pictures of the students reading with Mrs. Poole's class on Read Across America Day: