Classroom Newsletter March 28, 2014

Language Arts

Journal Writing – The children are writing at least three sentences in their journals now.  One of these sentences is a reaction to their topic, how they felt or an action taken.  The children enjoy sharing their writing each week and notice the progress everyone is making.  In addition to the narrative writing which we do weekly in our journals, the children have also been working on opinion writing during Writers’ Workshop.  I have been reading books and presenting the children with a question which requires that they give their opinion.  They must also give a reason why they feel the way they do.  Sometimes we just have a class discussion about our opinions, and sometimes we write about our opinions.  The children have shown growth in their understanding of this type of writing.

Fundations – We are now working on Unit 4 of this program.  We continue to drill vowel sounds and challenging letter sounds on a daily basis.  We are working on the proper formation of upper and lower-case letters as well as punctuation and spelling during our dictation lessons.  The children have become very proficient at being able to systematically tap out and blend words with three sounds and are applying this skill to their reading and writing.  The children are very excited about being “digraph detectives” and enjoy pointing out digraphs they see around the classroom.  The digraphs introduced are “sh, ch, th, wh, and ck”.

Reading - We continue to review the Kindergarten sight words and read books focusing on repeated exposure to these words.  The children work on one-to-one correspondence, using word wall words as an anchor, and using the picture and the beginning letter sound to help them figure out unknown words.  The children use the decoding strategies which have been introduced during our Fundations lessons.

The children continue to enjoy the Daily Five reading time when they “Read to Self” and “Read to Someone” and “Listen to Reading”.  They are independent during this part of our reading time, and I have the opportunity to work with small groups or individuals on other aspects of reading development.  I keep stressing to the children that in order to become better, more fluent readers it is important for them to practice reading in different ways.  They should read to themselves, to others, and they should listen to peers and grown-ups read aloud as well.

W.I.N. time – Each day we have a block of time which we now call W.I.N. (What I Need) time.  During this time, the Daily Five is used as the organizational structure, and children practice reading in the different ways described above.  I meet with individuals and small groups to work on different aspects of reading, writing, math, handwriting or any other aspect of the curriculum which needs to be reinforced, retaught, or extended.  There are other adults working with small groups and/or individuals at this time as well.

Literacy Centers – We talked about Spring and have been working on many activities based on this theme.  We wrote acrostic poems about Spring, read books about Spring and built a list of words in the –ing word family.

Math 

We completed Chapter 9 where our focus was on comparing sets of up to 20 objects.  The children continue to develop a more solid understanding of the concepts of more, fewer, less, most, and fewest.  They count the difference through comparing sets in one-to-one correspondence and answer questions, “How many more?  How many fewer?”  The children have also been counting on and adding using number trains/number lines.

We continue to practice skip counting by 2’s, by 5’s, and by 10’s each day during our calendar time.  We also practice counting on to 100 from any given number.  We keep count of the days we have been in school by using tallies.

We worked on ordinal numbers and are currently completing a unit which reinforces calendar concepts including days of the week, months of the year, as well as the concepts of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Science and Health 

We completed our unit on Properties of Materials and are now working on a unit on Transportation.  We have been reading books and talking about different ways to travel by land, air, and water.  The children worked on a mural depicting these many different ways to travel.  We will be inventing our own forms of transportation with the recyclable materials you have been sending to school.  Look for some interesting vehicles during our upcoming Open House on Thursday, April 10th!

Important Dates 

Friday, April 4th – Early Release 1:15 Dismissal
Thursday, April 10th – Open House – 6:00 - 6:45

Thank You

Many thanks to Mrs. Hodges for reading us a Dr. Seuss book during Read Across America Day.  We enjoyed having her in our classroom.

Welcome

We would like to congratulate Mason and his family on the arrival of Fiona.  We are excited that Mason has a new baby sister.

We would like to welcome Miss P., our new student intern, to our classroom.  We are happy to have her with us.

Supplies Needed

If you are able to donate anti-bacterial hand wipes to our classroom it would be greatly appreciated.  Also, we are in need of pencils for our classroom.  The children are comfortable writing with the fatter pencils for first writers as well as the skinnier #2 pencils used by the older children.  Thank you very much.