Fall was in the air this week though our room temperature
felt a bit like winter most mornings.
I mentioned to the children that they may want to bring sweatshirts in
their backpacks until the heat is turned on here.
We continue to settle into our routines in all subject areas and I’m hopeful that you’re hearing about our learning first hand from your child.
Word Study
This week we studied our first lessons with long and short
vowel sounds. Your child should be
able to tell you two ways to know when a word will likely use its long vowel
sound. We used word cards to make
long vowel words. Students also
worked again with consonant blends.
As a teacher I appreciate that our word study program spirals back to
concepts covered for review and to deepen understanding. For many students in my class I have
discussed with them the benefits our word study lessons will have on their
reading and writing skills.
Reader’s Workshop
I completed most of the DRA testing this week and last week
and will be analyzing the data this coming week. Look for an email from me with more individualized data
about your child! I’ve found that most students maintained their reading
comprehension and word decoding skills, but have fallen with fluency. Fortunately, this is often easily
remedied with practice, practice, practice. It is important for children to read “just right” or
appropriately leveled books when reading to increase fluency. In fact fluency building happens when
reading texts that are familiar to the reader. Please encourage daily reading at home. Research shows that the number one way
to increase reading is simply time spent reading regularly. We kicked off our workshop this week
learning about 3 types of classroom readers…the “Wow” reader, “So-so” reader
and the “Oops” reader. We created
charts for our classroom to remind us what these readers look like. Of course we are all striving to become
“Wow” readers where we stay on task, are involved with our books, are quiet,
use our known strategies, find comfy spots quickly etc.
Writer’s Workshop
Our class enjoyed several wonderfully written stories this
week, which we explored for the author’s craft. We spent time looking at Cynthia Rylant’s writing using
repetitive text, lists, and circle backs (where the other comes back to a particular phrase/ part of the
story). Students attempted using
some of these crafts in their writings. We also looked at Kevin Henkes’ stories again for
similar crafts. I was amazed to
hear some of the pieces written this week during our workshop time. Students enjoy the sharing component of
our workshop too!
Math Workshop
Our unit 1 (review of beginning math concepts) finished up
this week. Students seem more
comfortable with coin counting, time telling and skip counting than they were
our first week of school.
Most days I am able to check journal pages completed, but I will take
these home over the next week and complete any that I missed. Once these are sent home it will be
beneficial for you to review these with your child and have him/her redo any
pages with which s/he struggled. You’ll
notice that it’s not always the concept that is misunderstood, but the
directions (something we will be working on throughout the year asking students
to slow down and process before jumping in too fast). We completed the unit 1 review assessment Thursday. This is only a unit review and not the
benchmark test I referred to during curriculum night. Remember that when the benchmark test is coming up, a study
guide will be sent home.
Social Studies
Students continue to learn about communities. This week we talked about the groups we
are a part of in our community – at school, at home and other groups. Then we
created a web of the groups that we are apart of in our lives. We also spent
time taking a walking field trip outside where we talked about the human and
natural features around Dublin. Back in the building, we created a giant map
showcasing both human and natural features shown on a map.
