|
New From The Hive |
|
January 6, 2012
Dear Parents, Hope your holidays were happy and healthy! My family enjoyed spending time together and playing with our new electronics. We’re getting ready to wrap up the first semester and begin strong for the second half of the year. This month watch for activities related to winter. Students might want to begin preparing at home a collection of 100 items for our 100th day celebration next month. If they start now it won’t be such a chore. The items in their collection should be no larger than an inch so they will fit onto our hundreds grid. Reading instruction has focused on phonological awareness (hearing middle sounds, changing ending sounds and making new words, hearing and changing first and last sounds to make new words), letter knowledge (matching letters, identifying letters, identifying uppercase and lowercase letters, identifying consonants and vowels), and letter sounds (being introduced to consonant clusters, learning about beginning consonants). We have also added more sight words to our Word Wall (keep practicing our Words from the Wall). They should continue to practice oral reading skills when they bring their reading folders home each night. We have also worked on our reading strategies. We practiced how to be good speakers and listeners when working with a partner during reading. We are learning how to think and talk about the books we read to grow ideas. An important strategy when discussing the books that we read is being able to retell the stories. We learned that the characteristics of a good retelling include using the characters’ names, telling the setting (where the action happens), including the important parts of the story in sequence using time words (main events; first, next, last, …), telling the story in an interesting voice with expression, and checking the book to see if we missed anything or if our partner misunderstood something. Writing instruction - Our new unit will place a lot of emphasis on making our writing more readable for others All students are really coming along in developing independent writing skills. We shared our latest published stories with a partner in our class and with our third grade writing buddies in Mrs. Bonds’ class. We are very proud to share our accomplishments with them. During math we are concluding our lessons in the module “Building Number Sense.” Skills have focused on building numbers in different ways, counting to 110, making comparisons between numbers, exploring calculators, noticing patterns in our counting, problem solving, and combining numbers (addition). A letter will go home soon explaining our new module of study, “Survey Questions and Secret Rules”. I am currently assessing the students individually on number recognition to 110, skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s to 110, addition facts to 10, making pictographs, solving word problems, and writing random numbers to 110. Units of Study in Social Studies have focused on learning about past, present, and future. We will be exploring our own histories as well as the history of our school. Later this month we will move on to Science and focus on Matter as we begin exploring the properties of matter. Next we will learn about the properties of magnets. These units are a lot of fun to explore. During Computer Lab students wrote a letter to Santa following a template. We also used a template to write our New Year promises. Look for them in the hallway.
Miscellaneous: Book orders went home today in Friday Folders. Please make your payment for book orders by check to Scholastic or order online by the due date. I’m busy reassessing students on their math objectives, reading levels, and word recognition skills in preparation for report cards. I’m very pleased with what they have demonstrated so far. It’s amazing how far they have come since November conferences! .I will include comments regarding any additional practice that needs to be done at home to assist your student in meeting their objectives. As always, if you have any questions, please contact me. I hope you stay warm and healthy this month!
Sincerely, Mrs. Jacky Meier |
