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New From The Hive |
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Dear Parents,
You should begin noticing how well your child is reading now. Their skills are really beginning to take off. The children continue to benefit greatly from any additional experience they receive reading at home. Be sure to have your child practice their stories at home often. They should be working on reading for fluency and expression. Be sure to spend time on “book talk” – ask them questions about the story, discuss the pictures, have them retell the story using their own words, ask them what happened at the beginning, middle, and end. A reminder to send the students to school with proper outdoor clothing for the weather. Too many do not have hats or gloves to wear during the cold weather.
Reading instruction has added new words to our Word Wall (see Busy Bee Word Wall) and the children are learning to use the Word Wall as a tool for reading and writing. They are becoming very quick at recognizing and locating their Word Wall words in text. We have been practicing long and short vowel sounds. We have been sorting words according to a phonogram pattern (an, ake, at, ay, and). They are learning to notice word parts and have practiced changing the middle and ending parts of words to make new words. We celebrated the end of our comprehension strategies unit by making a class big book on what good readers do when they read. Next week we will be learning about the reading lives of the adults around us. I will share about my reading life, as will Mr. Cain and Mr. Don. We will make comparisons as we listen to the family interviews – look for these next week. We will learn that there are a lot of similarities to what we all read and where we like to read. We will also learn that most adults remember enjoying learning to read. We will also be moving on to learn about the characteristics of nonfiction books. Students will be choosing a theme of nonfiction books to study and research during the next few weeks.
Writing instruction is focusing on strategies to make our writing easy for others to read. We plan to celebrate the end of the unit by sharing our good writing with other teachers who will share some of their time to listen to our stories. We get nervous but excited to share our work. Next we will focus on using authors as mentors. Students will take the stories they love and use them as models of good writing. They are really coming along in developing independent writing skills.
During math we have been working in our third module “Survey Questions”. We are working on sorting a variety of objects by a secret rule. We will soon be gathering data and learning how to organize it and report it. Keep practicing those basic facts – addition and subtraction – at home.
Units of Study have focused on the seasonal changes of winter, Presidents Washington and Lincoln, and magnets. Students conducted several hands-on activities to discover how magnets work. Future lessons will include learning about characteristics of weather, animal characteristics and how young animals inherit characteristics from their parents.
During Computer Lab students continue to learn to use the program “KidPix Deluxe” to demonstrate a collection of 100 stamps. We wrote a cinquain winter poem using the word processing program.
Miscellaneous: This month is “Reading Month”. We really enjoyed our celebration of Dr. Seuss’s birthday. We will have a guest author on March 10. The 8th graders from Ore Creek will be visiting to buddy read with us on March 19 – I could use donations of juice boxes and mini muffins for our snack that morning (enough for 60 children). Book orders should be arriving next week. I appreciated the attendance of some of our students who went to Cromaine library to get or use their library card.. Our class won the first grade contest for having the most students participate. Our reward was a new book for our classroom library. Thank you, parents, for your support! The afternoon of March 26 is set aside for Records Day/conferences. Due to the limited amount of time, I will be contacting only those parents I feel a conference is a necessity. If you are not contacted but feel the need for a conference, please contact me and we can set something up after school another day. Report cards will be going home shortly after. Saturday, March 27, is our Village Fun Fair. We are in need of contributions for our classroom’s “Garden” themed basket for the silent auction. Your help is needed and greatly appreciated! Contact Lonnie Curri-Westphal or myself for answers to any questions. I think that’s everything! Let me know if you have any concerns regarding your child’s progress. I’ll be happy to arrange any additional conferences that may be requested.
Mrs. Jacky Meier |
