January!!

Writing

Some students have complaining about finger pain after all the writing they've been doing the last week and half after coming back from vacation!  They have been writing their fingers to the bone!  They've been working hard by adding more to their fairy tale, by spending lots of time making it perfect by revising and editing, by publishing their fairy tales, or by doing amazing illustrations!  They are almost done and they will be ready to share all their amazing fairy tales soon!  We will be moving into writing fiction stories after next week and thinking about how to add more to our characters and using a story mountain to help us to plan.  Can't wait to get to read all those fairy tales!  I will contact you soon for a "Cinderella Adaptation Day" where the parents can come and listen to all the different ways we have changed the original story of Cinderella!

Want to come and participate during Writer's Workshop?  Please let me know what time and day.  We have Writer's Workshop everyday from 11:35-about 12:20/12:35.  How can you help?  Sit and talk with various students about their writing, help support them with giving them compliments and suggestions about their writing to make it better!

Reading

The last few months have been busy!  We have been learning all about what we can do to be a better reader and learning strategies that help us to understand what we read!  We have been having lots of fun with the Daily 5 and it is a favorite part of the day.  Ms. Chip has been working more with small groups reading together and also working on other activities that help us to understand English better.  

Interested in coming in to join in the Daily 5 activities?  We do Daily 5 or Reading Workshop almost everyday (check your 2C schedules), from 8:15-9:00, again contact me to set up times to come in!  Ways you can support your child or other children is to do a word work activity with them, to sit and read one on one with a student, or help them shop for books that are just right for them! 

Math

We have completed graphing and we have learned all about bar graphs and pictographs, about labels and why they are important, how to read and compare data that are shown on graphs, and also we have made our own bar graphs on the computer! 
Now that we are finished with graphing, we are on our way to....GEOMETRY!  We have been introduced to different 2-D and 3-D shapes, we have looked at their characteristics, sides, edges, and corners (or vertices).  We have built buildings from diagrams and also have built our own buildings!  Geometry is lots of fun as we explore with shapes all around us! 

Again you are welcome to stop in during Math Workshop time as well.  We have math daily from 10:30 to 11:30, just let me know and confirm.  You can support by running an activity or center, or helping small groups with a strategy.  You might have a trick up your sleeve as well that might benefit the students understanding.

Unit

Since the last update we have completed Children Around the World, have learned a lot about ourselves and the people in our class.  We have learned how to respect other people's cultures and how they are similar and different from our own.  We even had a small celebration with food, games, and other cultural activities! 
We are now almost at the end of our Changing Cities unit.  We have learned all about the features of cities, how they change over time, and how people influence a lot of those changes!  We are currently working on city maps we have created and making changes according to scenarios that Ms. Chip has given us.  For instance, 100 more people came to our city or to help a traffic problem in our city.  We will be finished with these maps and our summative assessment by the end of the week and then we are off to learn about Sustainable Environments!  There must be lots of parents who can share some information with us about that!  We would love to hear from you!!! 

Welcome to the 2013-2014 School Year!

Writing:

From the first day of school, we launched the Lucy Calkins’ Writers’ Workshop.  Students have been zooming in on small moments in their lives to share through their illustrations and writing. We will begin working on revising and adding details to our writing.  You may begin to hear your child mention some of the following strategies: adding the inside story, including dialogue, telling the story bit by bit, showing not telling, or acting the scene out to catch missed detail!  I have really enjoyed sharing and listening to individual stories during daily workshop time.  As writers say, “When you’re done, you’ve just begun!”

Word Study:

To start the year, I have been collecting data on your child’s spelling level.  A spelling inventory was taken and words will be given each week based upon their performance on the assessment.  Additionally, we will be studying words and how they are formed through a program called ‘Structured Word Inquiry’.  Students will practice strategies for spelling words correctly such as ‘taste a consonant’.  Additionally, students will learn how prefixes and suffixes can change word meanings.  Be prepared to see words around the house falling under your child’s scrutiny!

Reading:

Each day we discuss specific reading strategies to be used during our daily reading workshop.  Students will be recording their voices while  reading to listen to what they sound like.  They will then reflect upon their reading and come up with an individualized goal to work towards. This will give them more ownership as they begin to improve their reading levels throughout each unit.  The CAFÉ Program focuses upon four major reading areas: Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expanding Vocabulary.  Within each of these areas, there are various reading strategies used to improve their skill.  Ask your child which strategy they think they are good at.  Ask your child which strategy they want to improve upon this year.  Read with them nightly to help them reach their goal!  RAZ Kids is a great way to ensure they are reading at their grade level.  Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns about RAZ Kids.

Math:

We will be learning all kinds of new, interesting things in math this year! Some of it may seem like more of a review, but it is always good to brush up on our problem solving and math computation strategies! We will begin to practice how to count money,  how to create and read arrays, explore even and odd numbers, find sums of numbers that make 10, pattern hunt, review place value and the list goes on!

PYP Unit:  Authors and Illustrators:

During this unit, we have been exploring all about how authors and illustrators express their creativity.  We have been learning about the differences between fiction and non-fiction books.  Students have become detectives while they read books, looking for clues from the illustrations that show how the pictures were created.  Discuss this with regard to the stories you read together at home. Students are also beginning to think about WHY authors write books.  What are the different purposes of books? Students will additionally try their hand at being published authors and illustrators.  They will find out how they can express themselves to their readers. Let the fun begin!