Week of September 4

Dear Parents –

I hope you enjoyed your long weekend.  We have another short week ahead – just 3 days this week. 

Here’s a peek at our week ahead:

Monday (No School)

Tuesday (Day 1) – Art and World Language

Wednesday (Day 2) – Music and P.E.

Thursday (Day 3) – World Language

Friday (No School)

Home Learning

Our Home Learning program begins this week.  At the beginning of each month I will post a menu of optional activities for children to complete at home.  The menu can be accessed through the tab at the top of our blog page – Home Learning.  Students have a choice in which activity they wish to complete.  While the Home Learning activities are optional, we do encourage students to try to complete one activity each week.  Reading is also an important part of our Home Learning and students are expected to read for at least 20 minutes each day. 

Reader’s Workshop

Our focus this week continues to be on strategies to help strengthen our reading comprehension.  We will continue to practice retelling a story across our fingers by highlighting the characters, setting, problem, main events and solutions.  This can be challenging as children will often try to retell page by page rather than only the main events.  Another strategy we will focus on this week is having children stop and jot down their ideas as they read.  They will practice writing their connections, questions, reflections, and other ideas on Post-It Notes as they read. 

Writer’s Workshop

We’re nearing the end of our first small moment story.  Students have been stretching out their stories by adding sensory details.  This week we will focus on crafting powerful endings by adding a character’s feelings, thoughts, or memory. We’ll have a chance to examine some mentor texts and learn about crafting powerful endings from master authors.  In addition, we will begin revising our stories and start our work on writing a bold beginning to help capture our reader’s attention. 

Social Studies

Our class has been rescued from the island and we are back in civilization again!  Our focus now shifts to learning about different types of communities and we will explore the features of urban, suburban, and rural communities.  This is a great opportunity for you to explore your neighborhood with your child and observe the different types of homes, buildings, modes of transportation, and other features of your community. 

Math

This week we will focus on the relationship between the place and value of a digit.  We will explore what happens when the digits of a number change place.  We will pay special attention to the role zero plays in building numbers.  Our math lessons always begin with a cumulative review of the skills we’ve been practicing so children will continue learning how to build numbers with base-10 models and skip count by 2s, 5s, 10s, and 100s.  We also regularly practice our basic addition and subtraction facts up to 20. 

Dinner Questions

What jobs do you have in your classroom?  Which one do you want to do?  Why?

Tell me something good that happened today.

What is the biggest difference between this year and last year?

Can you show me what you did in math today?