Wednesday, November 24th

 Hello Weckie Families! 

Let me begin by saying: Happy (early) Thanksgiving!! I have so much to be thankful for this year with this group of kids... I just love 'em!! We have really been doing awesome work this year while having fun and growing together. Our routines are down, partnerships are working like fine tuned machines and it is simply a delight to be apart of this classroom family! I hope that you take some time this weekend with your child to find out all of the things that they are thankful for. They have been loving all of the Thanksgiving projects the last week and getting a chance to express all that they are thankful for in their lives. I also hope you found the turkey recipe book comical but not in the least bit helpful! Please do NOT use those recipes ;-). But we sure did enjoy writing them. We happened to be working on them the day when the Cabinet team from the ESC came. It was pretty funny to hear the kids ask Mr. Gutman, Mr. Lonze, Mrs. Kochanski and Mrs. Moore all about turkey prep and what they might suggest the kids add or not add to their recipes! Lots of laughter for sure.

Readers' Workshop

We continue to work through a unit on solving tricky words. We have spent time doing slow checks, triple checks, breaking words up into familiar word parts, finding words within new words and more! Reading groups are picking up steam as all students are now a part of a reading group. Please make sure to keep the reading group books in your child's baggie that was provided so that books are not lost and are always available in their backpack for school instruction time. You may have also noticed word cards in their bag. If that's the case, those are high frequency words I will be working with them on in their group but are specific to their individual needs. You can use these to practice reading them, finding those words in their books, and then to practice writing and spelling them correctly! Their card pile will continue to grow as old words are mastered and new words are added!

Writers' Workshop/Science

Our Writers' Workshop is overlapping still with our science kits. We are becoming experts on plants and experts on writing lab reports! We currently have three lab reports in the works that answer the following three questions:

• What do plants need to grow?
• Can a seed grow without soil?
• What happens if you cut grass and alfalfa? Will they grow back?

In the next few weeks we will take our plant clippings that have been chilling in cups of water, growing roots, and plant them in soil as we attempt to create new plants from old plants! We call this process propagation!

Math Workshop

In Math we are deep in the work of subtraction. We have been learning many different strategies for solving subtraction. Strategies we have covered so far include:

• counting up
• counting back
• counting back through 10
• using doubles to subtract
• the -0 strategy for subtraction
• the -1 strategy for subtraction
• using fact families to subtract

The fantastic part here is that all and any strategy is encouraged and you'll see, each child tends to pick their favorite to use and help them to subtract. We also learned to play two new games, "Subtraction Top-It" and "Salute!". Both games help to work with subtraction skills and missing addends. Thank you to all who are completing the home links. I try to get them back to you in a timely manner so that you can see how your child is doing with our math concepts.

Parent - Teacher Conferences - Thursday, December 9th - 12:00- 

Now is the time to sign up on Skyward for PTC! Please know hat they will be virtual this year and a Zoom code will be sent the day prior so that you can attend your conference time from any location! I do believe the sign-up closes on December 1st, so please make sure to sign up ASAP.