A Feel of Fall in the Air

This week is Green Ribbon Week. A paper came home on Friday explaining the reason and the activities.

Also on Friday I sent home a yellow paper - it is the information about our Walking Field Trip to Wight's Fort Cemetery. It is also the permission slip for your child to participate. Consider it also as an invitation for you to participate in this fun activity. The bottom portion must be completed and returned to school by Wednesday September 15th.

Math
The students are learning to do a morning math starter. It both teaches and reviews all math skills through the year. We are also trying to gain a good basic understanding of some strategies for learning basic math facts. Please work with your child with the math facts cards that I sent home. I will send other sets of cards as I teach the strategies. They will get progressively more difficult.

During this week I will be having the students take a math pre-assessment test. Again I will be using this information to determine skills, needs and progress through the year.

Spelling
This week the students are studying words with consonant blends. These types of blends such as cl, cr, tr, bl, sl,... take the natural sounds of the consonants and blends them together. Please help your child study their spelling words each night.

Reading
I will begin this week to listen to individual children read. I am trying to assess their abilities and their needs. I am reading to them daily and we are doing some group shared reading. Remember to help them choose to read "just right books."

Vocabulary
We have read the book Mice Make Trouble. We are studying the meaning of 6 words from the book. This weeks words are:
contributed
assortment
inappropriate
orderly
concoct
civilized
They should be listening for these words being used at home, on tv, in movies, etc. If you can use any of them in your family conversations that would be wonderful.Before the week ends they should understand the meaning of these words. There will be a quiz on Friday.

Art
The children have made a Name Art cover for their portfolio and a tear art Watermelon. Ususlly there is an art project every 1-2 weeks.

Writing
The kids are in the process of writing pages for a class book that has rhymes for the song "Down By the Bay."
They are also writing about their summer vacation and doing a glyph tee shirt cover for their story.
We are learning about the basics of writing a sentence. They only need to remember 5 things.
1- a sentence must make sense
2- it must begin with a capital
3- it must have ending punctuation
4- they must use their best spelling, using resources I have provided
5- they must use their best handwriting

That brings me to an area of concern. About 1/2 of the students have good to very good handwriting. The other half of the students really need to follow the instruction I am giving them and work to improve their handwriting. I may be sending some individual notes to let you as parents and the students know specifically what things they can do to improve.

If your child does not know how to tie their shoes yet please continue working with them and help them to master this skill. Thanks!

This Friday we will do a special rotation with activities related to the study of rocks.

This week's keyword is: "Peach Cobbler" When you have read this blog, write the keyword on the top front of the yellow tracking sheet. Your child will receive 3 tokens for your interest in their education.

Some teachers use a weekly newsletter to communicate with parents. This is my effort to let you know what is happening in our class. Please let me know if it is helpful or not and what other kinds of information you would like. Comments can be left below but I think you have to have a Google account to comment.

Thanks for all you are doing to help your child be successful!! Thanks to all the parents who have and are volunteering to help me help your kids.

Book Orders

I am sending home the book order catalogs and forms. You can fill in the form and send it and a check made out to Scholastic Book Clubs in an envelope to school. Or, you can place your order online with the information given to you at Back to School Night. Online orders earn $3.00 each for the class. We also earn 1-10 points per dollar spent with the September orders depending on the volume of the order. Points can be redeemed for classroom books.

The main reason I send these orders home is so that you can purchase books your child would like to read. However, your child should be reading books on their reading level or lower. If they are trying to read a book that is too hard for them they become frustrated. A lot of the books in these catalogs list the Guided Reading Level down near the price. Look for GRL: ____. Your child should know their GRL as I have listed it inside their spelling folders and they are trying to choose books in the classroom library on their level.

If you don’t know the reading level of a book a good rule of thumb to know if it is a “just right” book is the following: If your child misses or struggles with 5 words on one page of the book then the book is too difficult for them. If you take them to the library and they choose a book just have them read a page to you there in the library. If they miss 5 or more words on the page then it is a book you can read to them but they should choose an easier book for their independent reading. They should only be reading “Just Right Books” at home.

The due date for orders from these catalogs is next Tuesday September 14th.

Keyword: Scholastic Book Clubs (Print this on the top front of your child's yellow tracking sheet and they will be rewarded for your reading the blog.)