Breast Cancer Awareness Goal
Click on the link above to read how our school community is helping one of our own in their fight against breast cancer. Weekly Theme: Community Helpers and Firefighters. We read books about fire and fire fighters then compared and contrasted the books. We added new learning to our schema chart (schema is: stuff we already know). Kids learned safety tips from the book Officer Buckle and Gloria and from the “Fire Safety Rap”. Kids predicted the community helpers in books using riddles. Our guest speakers taught about their job responsibilities. We learned about being a dental assistant, a heart nurse, a policeman, a music leader, and a fire fighter. Students chose what they want to be when they grow up and told why they chose that job. These pages are hanging in our hallway. Reading: Focus lessons were about making connections across texts, connecting texts to ourselves, and practicing reading strategies “Lips the Fish" and "Eagle Eye". Sight Words: like, he, she, is Handwriting: Always begin letters and numbers at the top. If your child is beginning at the bottom and moving the pencil upward, writing is more difficult and taking a lot of thinking to form letters. Help them practice moving their pencil downward over and over to break the habit of writing incorrectly. We haven't started handwriting pages yet, but getting a child to break the habit of pushing their pencil upward is a hard habit to break. Writing: Students learned how to think of a small moment from their lives and make that moment into a story. They learned how to plan their story page by page and separate pages that don’t go together. We talked about how the beginning of a story is like the bottom bun of a hamburger, the events are the middle or all the stuff that happened, and the end is like the top bun that finishes their stories. Kids wrote their first narrative for a pre-assessment. I will share these at conferences. We should see dramatic improvement as I teach expectations and how to plan each part of a narrative. Word Work: We used our "sound movers" to focus on the medial sound of a word and determine the letter that says that sound. "Touch and Think" slowed us down when saying the alphabet to ensure we are saying the correct letter we are looking at. We played "AlphaGo" by choosing 5 letters then listening for our letters to be called. "Accent!" is a game that practices letters being said louder and longer. Math Lessons: Kids are learning how to count and write 8, 9, and 10 and to use counters to represent the numbers 8, 9, and 10. Kids are learning to write the numbers on or beside the items being counted to count correctly. Using a 10-frame helps us keep our count in order and plan for the teen numbers. A Peek at Next Week: Weekly Theme: Apples – the life cycle of an apple seed, seasons of the year and how the tree looks in each season. At this time we have all the apples we need being provided by three families. THANK YOU! Reading: Focus lessons are about non-fiction text features, table of contents, diagrams, tree map, labeling pictures, sequencing letters to spell a word Sight Words: this, is and a review of he, she, is, on Writing: Adding more details to pictures and stories (where, who, what) drawing to show action, try spelling anyway even if it the word is hard. Knowing sight words helps fill in the little words quickly so kids can focus on the harder words. Word Work: We will be using the lowercase letters to match with the capital/uppercase. We will be using alphabet games to get kids to recognize and name letters more quickly. Math: We will finish Topic 3 and test on Friday. Creating combinations of 10 will be taught next week and is tricky. For practice give your child a few items, then ask them to add more so they have 10 total. Have them write the number they started with and the number they had to add to it to have 10. Upcoming Events: October 14th from 10 – 10:45 Fall Party **Addison’s mom, Traci, is homeroom mom. She sent a note home Tuesday asing that each family send $2 or $3 to help with party costs. Please send $ by Tuesday October 4th. Helping hands are always appreciated at the party. Please join us! October 14th- Early Dismissal at 12:30 Learning this Week:
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood Students have learned how to Turn and Talk with a friend to listen for information and ideas, and that when they listen with their entire body (ears, eyes, nose, lips, hands and feet) we have a win-win situation fr everyone. Weekly Theme: Germs, Five Senses - Students experimented with how germs travel and learned how to properly wash hands. Kids learned what happens to our bodies if sick germs get inside. They used all five senses to make observations about bubble gum! Reading: Retelling a story we have read, read aloud using punctuation as a guide, and use the reading strategies “Lips the Fish” (get your mouth ready) and “Eagle Eye” (use picture clues) when reading a book, making predictions for a story and retelling a story, making sure to mention the characters and the setting in a retelling Writing: Kids wrote predicable color and counting books. Sight Words: my, am, can Word Work: Kids learned facts about different birds to "Power Up," then practiced placing alphabet letters on their work mats. They have learned that there are two types of letters: vowels are open and voiced, consonants are blocked by the tongue, teeth, or lips, and that A is the initial letter, Z is the final letter, M and N are the middle letters, and everything else between A and Z are medial letters. Math: We started a new unit on counting, reading, and writing numbers 6-10. This week we learned to count and write numbers 6 and 7. Day of Service had every student actively participating in caring for our school. Check out our "Pictures" page for a peek at the fun. A Peek at Next Week: Habit #6 Synergize: Students will learn how working together helps all of us be successful and makes learning more fun. Weekly Theme: Community Helpers and firefighters. Kids will activate schema, make connections, and compare and contrast the different books we read. We have three guest speakers visiting to share their jobs with us. Reading: We will focus on comparing and contrasting within and across texts and practicing "Lips the Fish" and "Eagle Eye". Writing: Students will think of a story they want to tell and begin planning to make sure their story has a beginning, middle, and end. Sight Words: he, she, up, is, on Word Work: We continue to use letter mats to learn letter names and sounds for each. We will be using "Sound Movers" to pull initial, medial, and final sounds in words. Math: Next week we will work on counting, reading, and writing 8,9, and 10. Upcoming Events: September 27th - Tiger Pride Assembly @ 2:45 September 30th - Fundraiser Orders Due October 14th- End of First Quarter, Fall Party, Dismissal 12:30 Weekly Theme: Colors Focus book: I Went Walking, spelling and reading color words
*Track words by pointing to the word being read *Recognize color words by the number of letters and the beginning letter, sometimes using the ending letter. Following directions to color by code. *locating sight words and color words in text Reading: making predictions when reading and the purpose of non-fiction. Sight Words: went, did, you, Review: see, the We continue to review as we see these words in our books. Please help your child practice memorizing them. Writing: Stretching words to hear more sounds, hearing beginning and ending sounds, making writing the best it can be, reading writing to others. Kids were slinkies to practice stretching words to hear sounds. This is really hard at first! Please practice at home. Kids want me to say the word for them, but they have to start repeating the word themselves. Word Work: We used "Sound Movers" to un-blend words into individual sounds, then blend them together again to create a word. We finished discovering the capital letters A-Z and describing them using: diagonal, horizontal, vertical, open curve, closed curve. Kids are taking their little book "My Aa Book" home today. They !have had it in their book bags for two weeks. Ask your child to point to the words as they read it to you. Math: Counting and writing numbers 0-5., greater number, lesser number, recording a count to compare. A Peek at Next Week: Weekly Theme: Germs, Five Senses Reading: retelling a story we have read, read aloud using punctuation as a guide, and use the reading strategies “Lips the Fish” (get your mouth ready) and “Eagle Eye” (use picture clues) when reading a book Sight Words: my, am, the Word Work: More sorting letters, un-blending and blending sounds to form a word Writing: Writing patterned teaching books for numbers and colors using sight words "I see the (color word) ___". Math: Beginning Topic 3: Reading and writing numbers 6-10 Skills to Work on at Home (Learning Targets
Reminders: *Friday, September 16th - Fundraiser packets go home *Friday, September 23rd – Scholastic Book orders due *Friday, September 23rd – Willard South Day of Service (volunteers welcomed!) *Tiger T-Shirts will be given to children Tuesday the 27th. Please let your child wear a shirt that can be changed easily *Tuesday, September 27th – Tiger Pride Assembly @ 2:45 You will be notified if your child will be receiving an award. An information packet was sent home last week about school pictures. Picture day is Thursday the 15th. If you want to buy a picture packet, you must have this envelope completed and returned before pictures are taken. The company will not let you order at the prices listed after Thursday. If you do not want a packet, you don't need to do anything. If you order on-line, send the information envelope so the photographer will know your background.
Day of Service for Willard South is Friday, September 23rd. We are in need of supplies, and you are welcome to join us. Click on the link for more information Day of Service Reading: Last week students learned that reading for enjoyment is one purpose for reading. Most of them have heard Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? and can recite the story. They had fun reading the book to me by using the pictures. They sequenced the story as a class by using pictures of the animals that appear in the story. The tricky part was that they couldn't talk at all to accomplish this. I was very proud of how they worked together and helped each other find the right order. We took sequencing a step further and let them match the color words to the correct animal. This week we are reading I Went Walking to predict using picture clues and retell. We will also learn about the purpose of reading non-fiction books. Math: We learned about Comparing Numbers 0 – 5. We learned to use the matching strategy (one-to-one correspondence) to check if 2 groups were equal or greater. This week we will compare two groups to see which group is less and practice comparing. Our Topic 2 test is Friday. Writing: Last week kids learned that they can add more to their pictures and writing or start a new piece during writing time. They can write multiple pages on the same topic. This week kids are learning how to work with a writing partner to help make our writing better. We continue to stretch words and write all of the letter-sounds we hear to write a story. Work Work: We have been working with "Sound Movers" to slide a letter sound as we hear it when saying a word. Kids have learned the terms "Initial", "Medial", and "Final" to describe letter-sound placement in a word. This is important in making sense of writing and reading based on the sounds we hear. Yes, there is so much more, but this is where we start for our little guys. We have used the words "diagonal," "vertical," "horizontal," "closed curve," and "open curve" to discover letters F, G, H I, J, K, L, M in our Mystery Socks. We will finish the alphabet this week. We have also learned about antonyms. Last week and this week we are using our enrichment time to learn to spell color words by singing color songs. The kids are learning how to differentiate the color words by counting the letters in each word and looking at the beginning letters. We are also doing color experiments to play with color. Please remember to help your child wear our color-of-the-day. I've been taking pictures each day and will post them Friday. Tuesday September 13 ... Black Wednesday, September 14th… Pink or Orange Thursday, September 15th … White Friday, September 16th ...Brown Popcorn Words kids should know are: I, a, it, you, see, is, New words this week: went, it We have a class goal for 80% of the kids to know all the words on list A by October 7. If we reach our goal, I'm providing a special treat! Several parents have asked about keeping the monthly behavior calendars. I keep them at school and put them in your child's binder to be sent home in May. If at any time you would like to see or copy the calendars, I can send a copy home. Sometimes parents use these to refer to when helping with behavior. The week of September 26 through 30 we are learning about Community Helpers. If you have a job that you feel the kids would love to learn about and can visit us from 12:00 to 1:00, we'd love to have you share about what you do! Reminders: *Tiger T-Shirts will be given to children Tuesday the 27th. Please let your child wear a shirt that can be changed easily *Friday, September 23 – Scholastic Book orders due *Friday, September 23rd – Willard South Day of Service *Tuesday, September 27th – Tiger Pride Assembly @ 2:45 You will be notified if your child will be receiving an award. Learning this week: Weekly Theme: Nursery Rhymes - Focus rhymes:"Little Miss Muffet". We used the poem to: *Track words by pointing to the word being read *Differentiate letters Aa through Dd in the poem by highlighting each with a specific color **Dd is very difficult to differentiate from b for kids, so it was good exercise *Identify the characters and setting. *Discuss rhyming words and voice when reading *Act out the poems We also learned "Humpty Dumpty" and had some fun with eggs! We talked about experiments we could perform. We tested ways to protect an egg using items kids brought from home (on their own). Partners built block walls, thought of a way to protect their egg, then tested the fall. We learned that eggs bounce off pillows, paper towels are not protective, and eggs will roll off of bubble wrap. In each test the cement floor won. A few kids with a bowl and tissues chose to wrap their egg, thus protecting it from normal fall. Next week we will activate schema (background knowledge) about colors and sequence a color story. Kids will learn to spell and read color words. Reading: Kids were taught how to use the Alphabet chart in several ways. This is available on the Learning Links page. They learned the next Daily 5 structure: Read to Someone. We discussed how to sit with a partner, how to sit, and voice level. Kids practiced building "stamina" for all three structures. Stamina is doing something for a long period of time without giving up, getting too tired, or bothering others. Once all five structures have been taught, I will begin small group work, then move into reading groups. Next week kids will learn the Word Work structure which uses word building materials. Kids who are breaking stamina will be moved to yellow, so if the calendar note says "Daily 5 off-task" this means they were not doing as expected. Sight Words: Review of: I, see, a, go, to. Next Week: can, me New words: all (from "Humpty Dumpty"), (My Bb Book). We continue to review as we see these words in our books. Please help your child practice memorizing them. Writing: Continuing one topic: *Carrying on independently as writers and practiced saying a word slowly, stretching the word, and writing down the sounds heard. *Adding another page to tell more about a topic and staying on one topic for many pages *Adding labels using at least a beginning letter to clarify a picture, using a slinky to stretch words to hear sounds *Drawing and writing those "hard-to-write" ideas Word Work: LLP - Learning Listening Position (ears to hear, eyes to see, nose to smell, buds to taste, skin to feel, feet and hands are still plus you have to have heart, Letter Look "Mystery Letters" B, C, D using the words vertical, horizontal, diagonal, open curve, closed curve, Compound Words, counting Syllables using counters (each time the mouth opens, this is a syllable/Silly-Bull mascot), Sound Movers - counting words in a sentence Math: Continuing understanding of numbers 0-5, ways make 5. In math, we made different combinations of 5, wrote numbers 0 – 5 in order, and took the topic 1 test. Topic 2 is comparing numbers 0-5 using the terms: greater than, less than, and equal to. Leader in Me Lesson: Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind. We created a class mission statement together Skills to Work on at Home (Learning Targets)
Upcoming Events: Tuesday wear red, Wednesday wear yellow, Thursday wear blue, Friday wear green September 6 – Hat Day (Bring a canned food or boxed food item) September 15 – Picture Day September 23 – Day of Service September 27 – Tiger Pride Assembly @ 2:45 |
AuthorMrs. Christine Bailey Willard South Homepage
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May 2019
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