Word wall homework (otherwise known as phonics homework) starts this week. From now on, the students will have one math homework assignment and one word wall homework assignment every Monday -Thursday night. This week, the word wall homework will go home and come back each day, just like math homework. After this week, however, the entire week's worth of word wall homework will go into your child's binder on Monday and be due on Friday morning. A more detailed information packet will be coming home to explain this homework in more depth.
1-Bu has our walking field trip later this week. Please make sure that your child is adequately prepared to comfortably walk to our destination and back.
Here's what we've been working on in the classroom:
Reading : We added the last piece to reading workshop last week - reading groups. Now, when the students go off to read, some students are reading independently while others are in a reading group, reading and discussing books with me.
Last week the students focused on deepening the complexity of their reading partnerships. Not only did the students read with their partners, but they initiated and maintained their own conversations with their partners about things going on in the books that they read together. Talking about books during and after reading is a great way to develop students' reading comprehension.
Writing : Last week, the students worked on getting their writing pieces ready to be published. This means that they re-read their pieces to make sure they made sense, did their best job spelling and sounding out words, colored their pictures, and added a cover. The students will be publishing their books early this week, and then we'll start our new writing unit.
Math : We spent a lot of time last week developing the students knowledge and understanding of the complements of ten. They students should be getting more and more familiar with pairs of numbers that make ten.
Phonics : We went over our first short vowel last week, the short a. Have you child show you the hand movements we do to help us remember the short a sound.
Here are some pictures from our week: