Happy Friday Weckie Families!
We have successfully tackled another great week of virtual learning! I continue to be amazed at all our kids are learning to do virtually! This week they tried something new on Seesaw with the math open response and they did an INCREDIBLE job! Many were able to use the drawing tool, the photograph upload tool, the typing tool and even the microphone to record and explain their thinking - truly impressive! This week I also introduced Flipgrid as a fun app we can use to send video messages. With very little instruction I received a TON of emails from Flipgrid with posts to see from our Weckies who had self-taught themselves how to use the app!
Phonics Workshop
In Phonics this week we continued to dig deeper with the /er/ sound… think of the sound of a growling dog! We took a look last week at how words with -er, -ir and -ur vowel-consonant teams could also make the /er/ sound. This week we explored more with this sound in -or and -ar words. This was tricky! For example, in “dollar” the -ar makes an /er/ sound whereas in “art” the -ar makes an /ar/ sound. Kids explored with SNAP words as well this week. You should have received a hardcopy list of SNAP words on Thursday night in our supply pick-up. The writing folders have multiple charts in the prongs that will be great references for our children. SNAP words are words we want the kids to be able to read in a SNAP and spell correctly, also, in a SNAP. The more familiar they can be with these high frequency words, the stronger they can be as readers and writers. We will continue to use SNAP words throughout the weeks and please encourage your child to be creative in how they practice them! Ideas we shared included: using magnetic letters, using Scrabble tiles, using crayons to write the word big and tracing it many times with different colors, using the words in sentences, using the words on flash cards, etc.
Readers’ Workshop
In Readers’ Workshop this week and beyond I will continue working with each child through a reading assessment. It is important for me to listen to them read books that are just-right and instructional for them. Most of our students were last checked on in their reading last Winter, so much growth and many changes have occurred. This will help me to set their just-right reading books on our Literacy Footprints page specific to their needs. Please make sure you are encouraging your child to read on Literacy Footprints - there are a plethora of great books just-right for them on there! You can log on via our class Bitmoji! I will keep them posted when I need to meet specially to listen to your child read.
In Workshop this week our mini-lesson focus has been on: retelling to retain the story and revisiting stories to dig deeper into the text. These are huge topics that we will revisit and recover many times throughout the year! Being able to retell a story including main events from the beginning, middle and end is a great strategy for our readers’ to use to retain information from the text. Try practicing this at home as you read together this weekend! Ask them to retell you the details from the beginning, middle and end of their story. It’s important to learn to pick out the big ideas and not get lost in all of the smaller details of a story! Re-reading and revisiting familiar books is a great way for us to: learn something new from a familiar book, look at the different viewpoints of the characters in the story, dig deeper into the vocabulary used within a text or study the craft an author uses to tell their story!
Writers’ Workshop
In Writer’s Workshop we are still learning to write small moment stories. We spent time this week talking about what makes a small moment verses what makes a big moment. For instance, a small moment would be telling about eating out with your family at a cool restaurant while on vacation. The big moment would be telling about your whole 4 days on vacation. We want our writers’ to zoom in on one small moment in time and understand the concept of a small moment! Last we talked about how as a writer we can end our story in the moment! The idea is that as a writer we want to wrap up our story in the moment rather than ending by starting something totally different. Please make sure to visit our Seesaw page this weekend and have your child upload one piece of writing that they were working on this week.
Here are a few photos from a share time we had this week in Workshop! The kids LOVE to share their writing!
Math Workshop
Our biggest challenge in math this week was working with Number Grid Puzzles. The number grid puzzle was something we call, an “Open Response”. These tend to be challenging questions that take a familiar concept and challenge our learners by asking them to explain their thinking and any patterns they see in numbers used in the problem. This week we focused in on the hundreds grid and filling in just a piece of a grid while referencing the hundreds chart. On day 1 we talked about the problem and took time to play with it, posting our responses on Seesaw. Between day 1 and day 2, I found 5 responses that demonstrated a solid understanding and had those children share on day 2. Then after we talked about their strategies the kids had time to talk in a breakout group about how they would attack the second part of the problem as well as how they might revise their first answer(s). The fun of the Open Response is giving our learners a second chance to grapple with a problem and re-attempt to solve it with a little more background knowledge the second time around. I love to see them make their responses better on day 2. We also took time this week to talk about equivalent names for numbers, such as 2+2 being the same as 4. We learned a new “game” in loose terms called “Broken Calculator”. The kids had to create equations using addition or subtraction to represent a number but there was always one number they could not use. For example, having to give facts that equal 8 without using the number 8. We will continue to dig deeper on this strategy.
Social Studies
In Social Studies this week we launched our Second Step SEL program. We spent our first day talking about “respect” and what it can look like, sound like and feel like in a classroom. We spent our second lesson talking about “focusing our attention” and “listening” whether working at home or at school. These are great lessons to discuss at home with your child and I will continue to share the Second Step Home Links on our Google Classroom post for the corresponding day. There’s no need to turn them in, but instead please use them to have great discussions with your child at home about their social emotional learning!
iReady Launching Next Week
Next week we will begin our iReady Diagnostic Assessment in Reading. We will spend time Tuesday morning prepping for this and then giving it a try. Please know that we plan to go SLOW with this assessment. Researchers from the team at iReady recommend testing no longer than 15-20 mins a day to get the best effort and attention from our young learners. This means it will take us several days to take both reading and math assessments. Please encourage, motivate and praise your child for giving it their all! We need this valuable information to best guide our instruction this year and use this as a check point for their learning as we continue to grow. We will be working through iReady from 9:30-10am most days next week however Tuesday may take us longer, just until everyone gets into the routine of logging on. Students will continue to login with their WL Google ID and password. The only difference is that they will not type "@students.wlcsd.org" (for example, just their JL123456 username and L123wlcs password). All of these codes can be found on the Password Passports that were individually emailed out last week.
