Newsletter Nov. 12-18

I had so much fun meeting with parents for conferences. It's always great to get some time to actually sit face to face and talk about some of your favorite people and mine... your kids! Thank you for taking the time to meet with me, email me, and adjust your scheduled times to allow for a little extra discussion. Everyone was so supportive and thorough, I just know the next few months will be even better than the last!

Don't forget if you are looking for another opportunity to come into the classroom, you can sign up anytime- there are LOTS of volunteer openings available!
Volunteer Schedule for November

 

In Reader's Workshop we re just beginning our unit on comprehension (thinking about and understanding reading). We have just begun to connect what we know as writers (the organization of writing) to help us talk about reading. Here's what we've learned so far!
Good Readers...

* Think about the beginning, middle, and end of a story
* Retell beginning, middle, and end with a partner

Don't let your little reader forget those strategies we learned about in our last unit. Please continue to encourage them to use picture clues, beginning sounds, ending sounds, word families/ familiar chunks (such as -at, -in, etc.), skip and return, and most importantly... think! Ask "what makes sense" and cross check it with the words first and last sounds.

We are continuing to learning to add some variety to our stories to s-t-r-e-t-c-h them out and tell more. Brilliant Beginnings can start with sound effects, questions, character descriptions, setting descriptions, etc. Mighty Middles tell what happened first, next, then, after, etc. They include details that describe our observations using our 5 senses. "I could hear", "I felt", "I could smell", etc. By using the organization steps we've already learned, we can create stories that are easy to read, full of personal voice, and paint a picture in our readers' minds!

In Math Workshop, we continue to talk about fact families, addition, and subtraction. The most difficult thing to remember is that in subtraction we always start with the biggest number and that we can use subtraction to compare by starting with the bigger number and taking away the smaller number to find the "difference". Please work on this big idea (and vocabulary word for answer to a subtraction problem- addition answers are called the "sum") at home often to ensure that your child has a solid understanding of this concept.
Ex: 6 is how many more than 4?/ 4 is how many fewer than 6?

 

Today we got to celebrate all of our hard work filling our marble jar "with" good behavior. We watched the movie Monster's University and even ate lunch together in the classroom. It was a great time and a nice way to celebrate this milestone!