Career Day 2019

Our future is looking bright!
So fun celebrating Career Day!

Chef and News Reporter

Runningback and Baseball player

3 teachers and a principal

Vet, Robotics Scientist and an Astronaut

Princess and a beauty queen

2 hikers, a chef and a stay at home dog mom

2 police officers and a fire-fighter

Ninja

A look at our learning...

Fundations: tapping, tapping, tapping!  That is what we continue to work on in Fundations.  The kiddos are great at tapping out words during this time, in isolation, but now we are trying to get them to carry this over into their daily reading and writing and realize it isn't just something they do during Fundations time.  They are learning these skills to help them all throughout the day. When they don't know how to read a word....tell them to "tap it out!"  When they don't know how to write a word...tell them to "tap it out!" 

Check out the Friday Folder for ways to help with this at home.  

We have also started learning some cool things about vowels.  We are learning that some words have a "silent e" on the end.  We have learned that "e is bossy and tells the first vowel in the word to say its name."  They think it's pretty cool how adding a "silent e" to the end of a word can change it completely.  

mad---made

cap---cape

kit----kite

etc.

We've also talked about the saying "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." This means when two vowels are together in a word, the first vowel says its name and the other vowel is quiet.  

Here are some examples:

meat

paid

weak

etc.

Pretty cool stuff they are beginning to learn!  All of these things will help them become better readers and writers.  

Shared Reading: this week we learned the words be and up.  Since we have had so many short weeks, and several more to come, we are going to take a break from introducing new words the next couple of weeks.  We will spend this time reviewing our current word wall words and getting really good at reading and writing those.  We will still have a spelling test every Friday, but will be review words. Your child will be bringing our most up to date word wall list home today in their take home folder.  Please continue to practice nightly at home as well.  We will resume introducing new words the week of March 4th.  

Daily 5 & Reading Groups: I love reading all of the positive comments you write on your child's Tuesday/Thursday reading log.  They are becoming great little readers and work so hard during their daily reading groups.  All groups are learning strategies to try when they come to an unknown word: look at the picture, get your mouth ready for the first sound, tap the word/sound the word out, think what might make sense.  

When your child is stuck on a word at home, in any book, prompt them to use these strategies.  Children tend to appeal to others to just tell them the word.  I tell them I will always help the, but after they try at least 3 strategies on their own.  Usually after they try 3 things, they don't even need adult help.  

Writing Workshop: we have started our informational writing unit and are having fun learning about penguins!  We are filling our brains with knowledge by reading books and watching video clips about penguins and charting what we have learned.  Next. we will learn how to write an opening, 3 facts and an ending to write a teaching book that others can read about penguins.  After we learn all about penguins, we will pick another topic to learn about and do the same.  Once we get REALLY good at informational writing the kiddos will be able to pick their own non-fiction topic to study and write about.  This unit is always a favorite of kiddos each year.  

Math: as parent teacher conferences are coming up again, here are a few things we will be checking in math:

*can they count by 1's to at least 60

*can they count by 10's to at least 60

*can they write their numbers, in order, from 0-20

*do they know basic shapes: square, rectangle, triangle, circle, oval, rhombus, hexagon, trapezoid

Checking out the baskets we can try and win at the Circus tomorrow!  

Be sure to look for our Lego one!  It turned out awesome! These will be located in the media center and you can use flash bucks to try and win a basket!