Friday, December 1, 2017

December 1st Highlights

Hello families,

This week absolutely zoomed by! It was great to be back all together after the long holiday break. Our fox kits easily got back into our school routines and showed an amazing amount of HEART all week!

In Readers Workshop we practiced a few new reading strategies: think of words that might make sense, look for small words inside of bigger words, and try it 2 ways (flex your sounds--especially the vowel sounds). At the beginning of each workshop I model a skill and then we practice it that day and share out about how it went at the end of workshop that day.

In Writers Workshop we used one of our reading strategies to help us write! If we know how to write small words (at, in, and) this can help us write longer words within these families 
(at->splat, in->spin, and->land). We also focused more on bringing our stories to life by adding drama and making our characters move, talk, think and feel! Many of us are nearly done with another small moment story! Then we meet with a partner to help us ask questions and revise. Finally we edit for conventions of writing (capital and lowercase letters where they belong, spaces, punctuation, sight words, matching pictures). In our writing we use inventive spelling, putting in as many sounds as we can hear in our words. The goal is that we can read our own writing back and a friend or parent can read it without much help too.

This week in math was all about patterns. We used patterns to help us find all possible combinations of numbers. We practiced skip counting using +2, +5, +10 patterns. We organized our representations into groups of 2, 5, or 10 to more easily count and double check our work. We also noticed patterns for adding and subtracting while doing an activity called today's number. We played a few games about 10 with our St. Mike's buddies on Friday: make 10 go fish and +10 pathways.

In Word Study we continue spelling CVC (consonant-short vowel-consonant) words. This week we introduced 3 new sight words to practice spelling: is, his, of. We also began linking our practice words together into complete sentences--focusing on spelling our CVC and sight words correctly, leaving spaces between words, having capitals at the beginning of sentences and lowercase letters throughout as well as punctuation at the end. (Here are a few sentences we did this week: Ted had a dog and a cat. His hat is red. Meg sat on a log.)

On Monday we had a class celebration since we had filled our heart jar the last day before break. We watched the "Happy Turkey Day" episode of Wild Kratts. On Tuesday we dumped our hearts into the JFK Heart Monitor. We also saw a circus performance put on by the middle schoolers on Wednesday.

Thanks to many of you who sent in library books this week. We'll be going to the library again on Monday so hopefully you'll see some new books coming home to enjoy!

Each day as we transition from a high energy time of recess back into a learning afternoon we take 10-15 minutes to practice mindfulness (during our mind and body practice). It is one of our favorite times of day and sets us up for a productive afternoon. If you'd like to read more about mindfulness for children check out this link.


Dates to Remember:
Monday December 4 - Library 11-11:30 am
Wednesday December 13 - Early Release at 12:15 (Teacher In-Service)
Thursday December 14 - Winter Concert (students in classrooms at 6:00 pm; performance begins in the gym at 6:30 pm)
Monday December 18 - Library 11-11:30 am
December 25 - January 2 - Winter Break -- No School
Wednesday January 3 - School resumes


Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

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