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So sorry I have been offline for a time. Life happens! I hope all of the blog readers will come back and we can get you needed information through this method.

The keyword for this week is "FRACTIONS". Please read on for more information.

Vocabulary
On March 29th we read a book titled "The Great Kapok Tree". The vocabulary words from that book were: ancestors, lulled, slithered, wither, defenseless and intentions. I hope you have heard your child using or mentioning those words.

This last week we read the book "The Patchwork Quilt". The new vocabulary words are: anxious, dreaded, masterpiece, ruin, compassion, nurturing.

Spelling

Last week we worked on digraphs where two letters form a new sound not a blend of the two sounds. The digraph sounds are: sh, th, ch, wh, and ph.

This week we will be studying the differences between the "ing" and "ink" words. These are hard sounds for the children to distinguish. The hope is that this week they will begin listening better to how they say these words - leading to better spelling of these words. They will be tested on these words on Thursday April 15th.

They will also do one more spelling unit before we track off. They will be tested on those words on Wednesday April 21st.

Reading

The next week and a half I will be administering the PALS tests to your children individually. In this test they are asked to read lists of words. Depending on their success at that task they read a story selection and answer comprehension questions about the story. I also listen for fluency and expression and also time their fluency rate.

Science

We are studying life cycles. They will learn about the life cycles of frogs, butterflies and plants. We also learn about the relationship between plants and animals. This unit will continue when we return from off track.

PE

We have started learning about jumping rope. As you can imagine the children have a great variety of abilities. Some can jump fast and fluidly and others can hardly jump at all. This would be a great skill for them to practice while they are off track. We begin with basic, two legs together jumping while swinging the rope forward. We will progress to basic backwards jumping. Swinging the rope to one side then open to jump and a double swing to each side before opening to jump. We keep progressing with more difficult jumps. If the children practice most can become very proficient at jumping rope in second grade.

Math

We started our unit on fractions and will continue that study, hopefully completing it before we track off.

We began the unit by having the children (pretending they want the biggest piece possible) choose if they wanted 1/2, 1/3, 1/8, or 1/4. All but three members of the class chose 1/8. The other 3 choose 1/2. The children see the 8 and think it is the largest number and think it is the largest piece. This is a great beginning point to drive home the fact that the more equal pieces we break something into the smaller each piece has to be.

The students learn about halves, thirds and fourths. They learn about fractions of a shape (like 1/2 of a rectangle) and fractions of a set ( like 1/2 of a set of 12 balloons). The most difficult task is to understand fractions such as 1/3 of a group of 6. They have to first show three equal sized portions of the six (groups of 2,2,2) then note that 1/3 equals one of these three equal groups. So 1/3 of 6 = 2.

Please use the information I sent home last Friday to help you help your child as we study fractions.

Writing

Your children have been writing about spring. They have written a poem beginning with comparing spring to a color. These are on the bulletin board in the hall. The have also written about what they did on their spring break. This week they will write about rain and their memories of storms.

We have also been studying compound words, antonyms, synonyms, and a little about prefixes and suffixes.

Misc.

This week is the school Book Fair. You and your child can purchase books, before and after school and during lunch. Remember the Book Fair Diner - come eat with your child on Wednesday. At this point you would need to bring a lunch from home. You can just come during lunch and after your child has eaten you can go book shopping with them. This is a great opportunity as the book fair is a BUY ONE GET ONE FREE SALE.

Your children are creating cute umbrellas and will do another couple of art projects before we track off.


Please keep helping your child Read and Respond nightly. Please also help them complete and return homework by the next day. This is our final Reading Response Journal. When they come back on track the students will be doing mini-book reports weekly. Also, we need to turn in all Math Games before the children go off track. When we return the students will have paper math homework that will either go along with our study or help prepare them for the end of year testing.

Thanks for all you do to help your child be successful.
Keep up the good work.