Thank you so much to those families who came to Barnes and Noble to listen to me read a story on Saturday. It warmed my heart to see so many of my students and students' families there.
Also, a huge thank you to the class parents for putting together such a fun Halloween party for the students on Monday afternoon, even with all the crazy weather. The students had a great time!
Here is what's been going on in the classroom:
Reading : We've just about covered all of the main strategies that readers use when they get stuck on tricky words. We use animals to help us remember these strategies. Ask your child to tell you about Spoon the Raccoon Detective, Hugo the Huge Mouth Hippo, Slither the Sound it Out Snake, Chunk the Skunk, and Skippy the Skip It Frog. Each of these animals refers to a specific decoding strategy. We'll wrap up the end of this mini unit this week.
Writing : We've been spending quite a bit of time going over the writing process, or the steps to writing a story. The most important steps are the first two - coming up with an idea and telling the story 'across your fingers' (to make sure you have a beginning, middle, and end). Because we're working on writing about small moments in time, we've been spending time making sure that the students are making good choices about narrow writing topics. Have your child practice oral story telling at home by having him/her tell you a story about something he/she 'across his/her fingers.'
Math : Last week we started unit 3, which is all about patterns and counting. We investigated odd/even numbers, counting by 2s/5s/10s, shape patterns, and number patterns.
Odds and Ends : Last week we were lucky enough to have Mrs. Karpowich and Mrs. Crawford stop by for visits. Mrs. Karpowich did a higher order thinking lesson on finding common characteristics of groups. Mrs. Crawford did a lesson about day and night. The students used flashlights and replicas of the earth to investigate.