12-11-20

 Weekly News 12-11-20

Important Notes:

*Lockers - It REALLY helped to have lockers to store winter gear.  Feel free to send a spare set of shoes, a bag with extra clothes (in case your child needs to change) and an extra hat and set of mittens.  We can store these items in the top of their locker as back ups.  An extra sweater or sweatshirt for the locker is a really wise idea. 

*Please keep sending boots, snow pants, coats, hats, and mittens every day.

*Students always need indoor shoes as we don’t wear boots in the classroom.  Please send a pair every day or they can also keep a pair in their locker. 

*Homework:  Students will have a spelling list in their plastic envelope every week, along with their take home books for reading practice.  Soon a math homelink will be added on  Monday-Thursday nights. 

Our Work this Week:

*What a feeling to have 5 days of school in a row.  The kids adapted so quickly to our new schedule and were thrilled to see ALL their classmates.  We settled into routines with ease and got so much done this week.  Having the chance to do consecutive lessons and build that normal learning momentum was a joy! 

*In spelling we have completed our work on short u words and did the test on Friday. Next week is a review week for all the short vowel sounds.  If your child scores above a 90% on the pre-test they will not receive a spelling list for the week.  Students really benefited from the 5 day schedule and stepped up with doing their daily spelling work with more independence. 

*During math we continued in Unit 1.  Moving through 5 lessons in a week was terrific! We reviewed money and time, adding in the quarter.  We also worked on odd and even numbers, equivalent names for numbers, combinations of 10 and number patterns. We practiced using the calculator to do counting patterns.  Due to the time spent this fall with the first grade program, students are doing very well with these lessons and are showing good understanding with the concepts. 

*In reading workshop we focused on characterization in fiction.  Our learning target was to be able to explain how what a character says and does tells you how that character feels.  Students did well working through this with a simple chart to record their thinking and evidence from the text. 

*Writing workshop this week focused on using our planning sheets to write our first realistic fiction book.  We worked hard to “set the scene” on the first page by introducing our characters and including the setting.  From our narrative unit we know we should start a story with talk, action or feelings. Students are putting many of their small moment knowledge to use as they stretch out their imaginary adventures with details and elaboration. 

We practiced skip counting patterns and learned to "program" the calculator to continue a pattern!

We have been enjoying lots of new realistic fiction series to read.  They serve as a model for our own writing!

Realistic fiction series cover!

Sample first page in a series!

Lots of dialogue in our stories!

We worked hard to see the patterns in odd and even numbers.

This tool helped us identify which numbers were odd and which were even.

We used counters on a ten frame to visualize what odd/even looked like.

Mr. Hutchings is teaching us to be speed stackers in PE.

Doing PE activities!

The afternoon snack delivery is pretty exciting!

We worked on identifying characters actions and words and what it tells us about how they feel!

Author - hard at work!

DEAR time!