Friday, October 16, 2020

 Happy Friday Weckie Families!!

It has been an outstanding week of learning and fun in our virtual classroom! Students have been uploading lots of their work on Seesaw and Mrs. Weckstein is approving things as fast as she can (a super problem to have).  Please make sure to drop in on your child's Seesaw page to leave compliments!

Phonics

In Phonics this week we have spent a TON of time with our 85 SNAP words. These are those words we want our students to be able to read and write in a SNAP. Each day we have focused on a different strategy students can use to help them learn and memorize these words. We have invented our own sayings and songs, practiced writing them different ways like rainbow writing and typing on Google docs. We even ended the week with a fun game of SNAP-O (think BINGO with SNAP words).  We will continue to encourage our students to use these words in their writing to help build their familiarity and to help build their correct spelling.

Readers' Workshop

We have continued our discussion around re-reading books to learn more! We found that when we re-read we can learn more about our characters and in particular their feelings. We talked about how after reading a story we can talk about how a character might change over the course of the story, but you really notice it when you go back and re-read because you already know the outcome. We also talked about how re-reading a book helps us to know how a character should sound so we can read fluently to sound like the characters! We spent time practicing our reading to sound fluent by looking for clues: punctuation, bold or italic print, dialogue (quotation marks) and what we already know about a character or the outcome of the story! The idea is to read with a smooth voice and use  BIG voice!

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we are wrapping up our first unit on writing small moments! Students have been working this week to edit and revise their work. They have gone back to their writing to set goals for the future of their writing to see how they can improve and grow in their work! We have spent time talking about capital letters, compound words and how to fix up and fancy our writing! On Monday we will do a celebratory share of our published piece so please make sure your child has this handy and ready to go!

Math Workshop

In Math this week we have slowed down to wrap up our first unit. Students explored with Math Stations and games this week to review concepts like: number sense, skip counting patterns, basic addition, number grid work and more! We will not be giving the Unit 1 test now, however students may take this test once school resumes in person/on our path so that teachers can see what skills students have gained from the first unit and move forward with our learners.

Social Studies

In Social Studies this week we learned about human and natural features in a community. We watched a short video reviewing the concepts before we went outside exploring around Mrs. Weckstein's house and then students went out around their learning spaces. We created a t-chart with feature that we found outdoors and shared them in breakout groups once we returned!