Weekly Update

Hello Families,

It felt great to have another full week of school. We are back to a consistent routine, which really helps our learning. We are fortunate enough to have a student from The College of St. Scholastica completing a 30 hour field experience in our classroom. Ms. Jessica Madsson spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings with us this week. She is assisting with small groups and some one on one teaching during reading, math, and word work. She will be with us 7 more mornings. It’s a great opportunity for everyone! J

Math

Tens and ones was the theme again this week. We learned how to write numbers in expanded form. (47 = 40+7) We also learned how to write numbers is different ways. 47 can be 40 + 7, or 30 + 17, or 20 + 27 or 10 + 37, or 0 + 47. This concept was very tricky. Any extra practice at home would help. J We ended the week with our assessment on tens and ones. Next week we will begin a unit on comparing and ordering numbers to 100.

Reading Workshop

Great readers use their five senses to visualize text as they read. We have been reading and visualizing more poetry this week. Ask your child about the following poems: “Spring the Season of Joy”, “My Neighbor’s Dog is Purple”,  and “Shhh! They are Sleeping.” We are collecting our illustrations and will put them together in a book of “Our Mental Images.” These will be completed and sent home at the beginning of April

Writer’s Workshop

We wrote about somebody who means more to us than gold. These were sent home earlier in the week. I hope you enjoyed reading them.

 

This Week I Really Learned!

Thank you for writing to your child each week. We were not able to write out letters this week with all of the Valentine’s festivities. Feel free to have your child write a letter to you at home and/or write to your child anyway. J We added a sentence to our letters this week. Each child needed to start his/her letter with, “This week was ____________________.”

Word Workshop

This week was all about the long o sound. We practiced reading and writing long o words with vowel teams: oa, oe, ow. We also learned a unique syllable for the long o sound which is “old.” Of course we didn’t’ forget the long o sound can also be spelled with an open vowel like in the word no. The children know that there aren’t rules for many of these patterns. They know that reading more will help identify the correct spelling by how the word looks when tried a variety of ways. J

Grammar

We had lots of fun identifying adjectives in our morning messages this week. We are getting pretty good at this! Adjectives describe a noun. Make sure your child can identify the adjective and the noun it describes. (The new, red car is mine. New and red are adjectives describing the car.)

Other

Tissues

We are on our last 3 boxes of tissues. If you have an extra box you’d like to send, we’d be very thankful! Thank you for those that have already come in! J Also, thank you to all of the families who sharpen pencils for us! I can’t tell you how much it helps us out every day. J

Water Bottles

Please remember that water bottles may only contain water. If you would like your child to drink something other than water at snack, please send a small amount (no more than 6 ounces) of a beverage that does not contain sugar. I’ve asked the students to bring their water bottles to school empty and fill them with water in the morning. I’m hoping this will eliminate the bathroom “emergencies” we’ve been having lately. Thank you very much for your help with this! J

Report Cards

Report cards are being sent home with students today. If I did not receive the envelope back from trimester one, I placed the paper report card in your child’s take home folder. All other report cards are in the envelopes. You may keep the report card, and send the envelope back signed at your earliest convenience.  A blank area means it was not assessed this trimester. Some students were re-assessed on some skills that were taught first trimester. These grades are reflected under second trimester.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions. Standards based reporting is new to us all! I’d be happy to help explain more. J

Have a wonderful weekend!