Week of December 14, 2015______________‘s

Reading Log & Newsletter

Today I read with… Comments…

IMPORTANT DATES and REMINDERS:

The Food Drive was a big success! Thank you to those who contributed!

Students need to be able to put on their own winter

gear; please work with your child on this!

Don’t forget that your child can use RazKids and

IXL at home! Their usernames and passwords

are on their folders!

We will have a Winter Celebration with Mrs.

Martin’s and Ms. Dunn’s classes on the afternoon

of December 18th.

The Holiday Break isDecember 21st-January

1st.

***FLIP OVER

Please be aware that children are expected to arrive at school no later than 9:00. Students are expected to be at school unless they are sick or have a pre-approved excused absence. Forms are available from the office to request an excused absence. I do my best to catch

students up, but please be aware that giving individual

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Week of December 14, 2015

What did we learn last week? Math: We dove into Chapter 7, Numbers to 20, this week. We learned about the number words for numbers up to twenty and practiced counting on. Students learned about place value and compared the tens and ones in numbers to determine which number was greater or fewer. The hardest concept so far has been determining how many fewer or greater a given number is than the number it is compared to. I am planning on assessing this chapter on Friday, so please keep this in mind. I have had an unusual amount of children being kept out of school for reasons beyond being sick, so I felt the need to let you know this in advance; if you decide that you are not sending your child to school on this day, please let me know right away so I can plan to assess them ahead of time. Word Study: Our lists of common blends and digraphs are complete and students have added charts to their literacy binders to assist them in their reading and writing. We have been practicing reading and writing these and I am seeing nice growth! We also reviewed our long and short vowel sounds as these continue to be a problem area for many students.

Reader’s Workshop: We looked closely at nonfiction books to learn about the different text features that can help us learn from informational texts. We practiced using our “teaching voices” when we read nonfiction and worked on identifying important parts to emphasis. The kids are working hard to learn from what they read and practiced showing evidence of what they learned by talking to their reading partners about their reading.

Writer’s Workshop: We stepped away from our How To books for a day to do some writing about families long ago. The kids each wrote a book telling what their life may have been like if they lived in colonial times. They did a great job using what we have learned as well as using the many books we had available as references. Our How To’s are coming along nicely! We worked on creating “What You Need” pages and giving our readers all the information they need to learn from our books.

Social Studies/Science: We created a Venn diagram comparing kids of today and kids who lived in the colonial days, read some more period books and discussed what our lives would have been like long ago. We wrapped up the unit with our “If I lived long ago…” writing. We also had our final Arts Are Elementary session. Students brought home their clay projects.

We exceeded our goal by collecting 120 items for Midcoast Hunger Prevention!