A big welcome back! I hope you all enjoyed a relaxing week. We now have about 9 weeks of mainly uninterrupted learning (aka teacher heaven!). Here's what we will be up to in the comming weeks.
Reading
We continue with intensive phonics instruction during our group work and literacy centers. The kids are learning more about initial blends, silent "e", suffixes and lots more! When I meet with your child individualy for our conferring time, I refer to my notes from our previous sessions so I can build on what they are learning. I am seeing some amazing progress!
We are just finishing our comprehension lessons where we were focusing on "wondering" and now we are moving on to the stragegy of exploring text features. The students are learning to use a table of contents, index, glossary and learning how to read text labels and insets.
Writing
Our writing is focusing on informational writing. The students are learning how to write "How To" books. We have been focusing on writing precisely and adding labels to diagrams. They had fun during our peer editing time the other day acting out their writing partner's How To book.
Science
We are just beginning a really fun thematic unit on insects. We have been learning about animal parts through our frog obervations and now we are contiuing with that theme as we explore the wonderful world of bugs! After our insect unit we will continue our science curriculum of plant and animal parts but looking more indepth at plants and how they grow as well as their life cycle.
Social Studies
Our social studies unit has us focusing on community. The students and I will be reading some books and having discussions that involove this topic.
Math
In math, we are continuing on with our problem solving focus as well as learning to count, read, write and add larger numbers. The students are having fun adding to their number scrolls. Some students are well into the hundreds now and their scroll stretches half way across the classroom!
Thank you to all of our amazing parent helpers who have come into the classroom on such a consisten basis. I truly appreciate your help.
Jennifer
