News Update
Important Dates and Reminders
*Picture day is October 1st, forms should be coming home next week.
*Please remember 2 healthy snacks a day. No peanuts due to allergies.
*Thank you to those who emailed expressing interest to volunteer. I will be contacting you soon to help.
* The DCC is looking for volunteers to help with the students on September 28th- Please see the Deerfield Download for more information.
*Password papers will go home late next week. I'll send an email the day I send them home so you can expect them in your child's folder.
Language Arts
This week, we started practicing routines for our Reading Learning Shop. We worked on choosing "Just Right" books and building our reading stamina. This class LOVES to read! They love books and enjoy spending time in our book corner. Next week we'll work on teaching the different components of our Learning Shop; Word Work, Listen to Reading, Read with the Teacher, and Read to Self. Our Reading Learning Shop is based on the framework of the Daily 5 that structures literacy time so that students develop lifelong habits of reading, writing, and working independently and within a group.
*Next week, we'll work on an Author's Study, reading books by Kevin Henkes. We'll learn about story mapping and focusing on character, setting, problem, solution. We will also write in our Reading Response Journals.
We also practiced reading and writing words with short vowel sounds during word work. We made our Word Work Books and began to sort words and look for patterns. Next week our focus will be on letter blends.
In Writing, we've set up our Writing Binders. We'll be working on writing ideas for our personal narratives next week.
Math
We are working on Unit 1 in math. We focused on learning how to use our math "tools" (not toys) and worked on number lines. We also practiced our "Math Learning Shop," routine. Our Learning Shop consists of 4 math stations, Math to Self, Math with Someone, Teacher Time and Math and Writing. Math to Self consists of review and basic skills practice. This week we focused on effort and using stamina to complete as much as we could during the fifteen minute timeframe for that station. At Math with Someone, we practiced our "partner principles" while we played math games with a partner or a 3 person group. In math and writing (my favorite, but not always theirs) students write in a math notebook and explain their thinking with words, pictures and diagrams. We learned the format of writing in our notebooks (date, learning target and dot check). In the Teacher Time Station, students sit with me in a small group and practice math concepts from the lesson. This is a great opportunity for me to formatively assess because it's such a small group, I can really focus on needs.
These are online games that your child might like to play for practice with number sense.
Science
We've worked all week on learning how to work with a group practicing our "partner principles," Because many of my Science Units are based on Project Based Learning, my first priority is teaching students how to work together, creating a community of learners. We are a team, we work together like a team. Today we began to focus on inquiry. We began by using a Thinking Routine called, Think, Puzzle, Explore. This routine is from a wonderful book I read several years ago, which teaches strategies for thinking using thinking maps. We worked on this today, activating our schema and thinking about what we THINK we know about ... worms! We'll continue to work with our worms next week!
Project Based Learning
We are answering the question: What do we think we know about worms?
We are answering the question: What do we think we know about worms?
What do we wonder?
**Suggestions for Continued Learning at Home: Read! Have your child read to you, read with them (they read a page, you read a page) and read to them! In math, practice counting. We're working on number sense. Some children are having difficulty counting numbers 1-100. Some need more practice with numbers 100-200 and some may need to practice numbers in the thousands. This is really the basis for number work. When I worked with them today we played a simple game where I asked them to write the number that comes after 199 or what comes before 50? For some, this was very difficult. We'll continue to work on this!
Have a great weekend!
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