October 31

Dear Families,

Here’s an update on what’s happening in our team:

 

October Animoto

Reminders:

November 3^rd: Election Day, no school for students

November 6^th: end of first card marking

November 12/13: Special Person Breakfast, 7:45- 9:00a.m.

November 12-20:  Book Fair

November 19^th: half day of school with a 12:30 dismissal and Conferences from 1-4 and 5-7, more info to come!

November 25-29: No school for Thanksgiving Break

Halloween Party: Thank you to our Party Planners and volunteers. The party was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time! After seeing all of those fun costumes, I’m sure your child will have a fabulous weekend trick-or-treating!

 

Halloween Animoto

Language Arts: This week in Reading Workshop, we focused on oral and written nonfiction retellings.  Your child practiced retelling a nonfiction article on jack-o-lanterns and then answered questions based on the article.  We learned how to find text evidence and how to properly answer a question. We will continue with nonfiction retelling next week by reading an article about the month of November.

Word Work: In word work, we worked on the long /e/ sound including words with ee and e_e and ea.  It is very helpful to point these types of words out to your child when reading with him/her at home.  We will move on to long /i/ words next week.

Writing Workshop: This week, we worked on revising our personal narratives. We'll continue to work on revision and will work on writing amazing leads and closings. Our focus will be on studying Mentor texts to help us with identifying authors' craft.

Math: This past week, we did lesson 2.8, 2.9, and 2.12 if you are following along with the home links.  We had our Unit 2 test Thursday with an in-class review on Wednesday.  We will be taking our quarterly test on Monday.  This will cover material from the first two units.  We will be taking one of these tests each quarter to see how the students have retained the previously learned information. On Wednesday of next week, we will be starting Unit 3 with a pretest.  The results of that test will come home, along with a study guide for the unit.  This review does not need to be returned to class.

Science and Social Studies: 

We've been working on our Map unit, finishing up our "Me on the Map" flip book. We are also learning about ordinary people who have changed the world. We've read about Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Amelia Earhart. We've also practiced writing questions using the prompt: Ordinary People can change the world. We'll use this as our theme for Project Based Learning this year, incorporating this into our Science and Social Studies Units. 

Our Maker Space!

Click on link above to read an article on Maker spaces!

 

Several students worked on a Makey Makey with Mr. Fry this week. They'll teach others next week!

Homework:

*Math Homelinks Unit 3 (attached to email)

*IXL Skills: have your child practice in any area they need to review

*Have your child retell a story he/she is reading at home.

*Practice math 10-15 minutes a night and reading for 10-15 minutes a night. Please complete this in any way that works best for you and your family.

Have a great weekend!

October 25

Dear Families,

Here’s an update on what’s happening in our team:

 

Reminders:

November 3^rd: Election Day, no school for students

November 6^th: end of first card marking

November 12/13: Special Person Breakfast, more info to come!

November 19: half day of school with a 12:30 dismissal and Conferences from 1-4 and 5-8, more info to come!

November 25-29: No school for Thanksgiving Break

 

 

 

 

 

Fun Run Pictures!

 

 

Halloween Party: Thank you to our Party Planners. We’re looking forward to a great party next Friday. Please be sure that your child’s costume is appropriate (not too scary) for school. Children will change out of costumes after the party so that they can enjoy lunch and recess without worrying about their costumes. Please send in a bag to store their costume in. Our celebration will begin at 10:05am.

 

Making our Halloween Decorations

 

Language Arts: This week in Reading Workshop, we focused oral and written retellings.  Your child practiced retelling a fictional story including all the elements to a solid retelling.  Next week, we will focus on retelling non-fiction texts.

 

Word Work: In word work, we worked on the long /a/ sound including words with ay and ai.  It is very helpful to point these types of words out to your child when reading with him/her at home. Next week, we'll work on words with the long e patterns, ee, ea, ey.

 

Writing Workshop: We worked on finishing up our blog posts! We had fun on Friday commenting on posts.  Many students are blogging from home! Keep practicing logging on, drafting a post and commenting. Next week, we will finish up our first personal narrative unit we've  been working on, taking our writing pieces through the writing process.

 

 

 

These are some of our amazing paper blogs!

 

 

Math: This past week, we did lesson 2.3, 2.5, and 2.2 if you are following along with the homelinks.  We will be having our Unit 2 test next Thursday with an in-class review on Wednesday.  We always send home the review at the beginning of the unit so you know what types of questions your child will be tested on.  This was sent home during the week of Oct. 12.  Please go over the review at home with your child.  The review should not be returned to class.

 

Science and Social Studies: We started learning about Unit 2, People and Places.  The students are working on a fun activity called, “Me on the Map” where the students wrote and illustrated pictures of their  houses, city, state, country and Earth.  We will finish up Unit 2 next week and move onto our first Science unit, Earth’s Land and Water.

 

Homework:

• Math Homelinks were sent home as an attachment.
• IXL Skills: Use sections E, F and M on IXL (Addition of One Digit, Subtraction of One Digit and Place Value, addition word problems).
• Have your child retell a story he/she is reading at home.
• Practice math 10-15 minutes a night and reading for 10-15 minutes a night. Please complete this in any way that works best for you and your family.

 

Have a great weekend!

October 16

Update

Dear Families,

Here’s an update on what’s happening in our team:

Reminders:

October 30^th: Halloween Parade (9:15), Party 10:05-10:50ish

November 3^rd: Election Day, no school for students

November 6^th: end of first card marking

November 12/13: Special Person Breakfast, more info to come!

Halloween Party: Thank you to our Party Planners. We’re looking forward to a great party. Please be sure that your child’s costume is appropriate (not too scary) for school. Children will change out of costumes after the party so that they can enjoy lunch and recess without worrying about their costumes. Please send in a bag to store their costume in. Our celebration will begin at 10:05am.

Language Arts: This week in Reading Workshop, we focused on Fiction Retelling as our Comprehension Strategy. Students wrote retellings in their reading journals based on stories that we read in class. Next week, we’ll continue to practice oral and written retellings.

Word Work: In word work, we worked on digraphs. We sorted and practiced working with words with the ch, sh, th, wh, and ph sounds.  Next week, we will work on words with the long /a/ sound.

Writing Workshop: We worked on writing our first blog posts on paper! We created blog lists of our interests so that we’ll always have ideas for posts. We’re learning about the importance of proofreading and editing so that our audiences can read our writing. We also worked on learning about the expectations for commenting. We commented on each other's paper blog posts. Next week, we’ll continue to practice commenting on others’ blogs, digital citizenship, and the responsibility of being a blogger online.

Math: Please sign and return Unit One tests, if you haven’t already. We took Unit 2 pretests this week and began studying Unit Two. We’ve completed Lessons 2.1 and 2.4 and are learning about addition strategies. Next week, we will be working on lessons 2.3, 2.5, and 2.2.  These lessons focus on addition strategies such as doubles, near doubles and solving word problems.

Science and Social Studies: We’re finishing up our studies of communities and government and soon will begin learning about People and Places.

Homework:

Math Homelinks: These were emailed to you in a PDF format.

IXL Skills: Use sections E, F and M on IXL (Addition of One Digit, Subtraction of One Digit and Place Value).

Have your child retell a story he/she is reading at home.

Practice math 10-15 minutes a night and reading for 10-15 minutes a night. Please complete this in any way that works best for you and your family.

We had a great time at Fun Run today! Thank you to all the families that supported Deerfield!

Have a great weekend!

Updates

Dear Families,

Here’s an update on what’s happening in our team:

Reminders:

• Fun Run is Friday, October 16^th! Continue to send in your pledges! 
• Applications for our Student Lighthouse Team came home this week.  If your child is interested, they need to fill out the application and return it by Wednesday, October 14^th.

• Next week is Spirit Week! There will be an orange sheet of daily activities going home this afternoon (Friday). 
• Volunteers are needed to help trace and cut patterns for our Halloween crafts and also to make some math counters for us. Please email me if you're interested!

 ·         In order to make our dismissal run more smoothly, as a school, we are asking that if you are coming to pick up your child from school at the end of the day, that you stay in your car and go through the parent pick up car line.  This is for the safety of all children.  Thank you for your understanding!

Language Arts

Reading Workshop: This week we learned about the different stations students will be visiting during reading workshop.  Students practiced building their stamina at centers as well as transitioning from station to station.  Next week we will be learning reading strategies of how to think before, during and after our reading, as well as practice with retelling fictional stories!

Writing Workshop:   This week we began working on our rough drafts with our paper blogs! We will  follow the writing process to write our first blog.  Please note we are not starting online kid blogs for a couple of weeks.  There is a lot of instruction needed before jumping into our online blogs! Next week, we'll learn about online safety. We'll also  begin to learn the process of commenting and later set up our Avatars on Kidblog. 

Math

 We wrapped up unit 1 this week, testing today!  Tests will come home to sign and return next week.  We will be taking a pre-test and focusing on lessons 2.1 and 2.3 next week if you are following along with Everyday Math Online.  Remember to check online using your child’s password for homelinks! 

Science/Social Studies

This week we learned about communities, rural, suburban and urban. Next week we'll learn more about maps and begin to make our own maps using the compass rose and map keys. We'll also begin to learn about why communities need governments. 

Homework

Students should be practicing math for 10-15 minutes a night and reading for 10-15 minutes a night.  Please complete this in any way that works best for you and your family.

Have a great weekend!!!

October 4, 2015

 Update

Reminders:

October 7th: Student Count Day

October 16th: Fun Run. This event helps to fund many of the activities we do throughout the year. Thanks to all who have sent in their donations!

October 30th: Halloween Celebration, more info to come! Thanks to all who have sent in party donations!

 

 

 

Picture Day!

 

Language Arts

We continued to work on routines and procedures in Reading Learning Shop. We also learned about setting goals as a reader. We practiced all of our stations and did such a wonderful job staying on task the whole time. At Listen to Reading, students responded to prompts about what they heard. In Word Work, we studied words with blends at the end of the word (best, ring). We'll finish the blend concept on Monday and then focus on words with long vowels and the magic E. We've shopped for our book baggy books and continue to build stamina while reading to self.  Almost all students have been tested in comprehension and decoding and we are ready for Teacher Time!

 

Blogging/Writing

This month, we'll begin to learn about blogging. We'll start off by learning, "What is blogging?" then move into digital citizenship. We'll create "paper blogs" while we learn how to take our writing through the writing process, and finally learn how to comment on others' blog posts using post it notes! By the end of the month I'm hoping that several students will be able to start blogging on their own blogs through Kidblogs. I've set up an account and Mrs. B. will be working with students to set up their pages, avatars, and learn how to navigate through the blogging process. I've found that this is a very motivating and positive way to teach writing to first and second graders. When students have a larger audience, and they know their peers and even families are reading their pieces online, they tend to revise, edit and care more about their writing. I'll send more information home about Kidblog as we get closer to our launch!

 

Top Ten Reasons for Students to Blog

 

Math

This week we practiced our Math Learning Stations by staying on task the whole time, learning about clean up expectations and rotating from station to station. Students worked on Math Journal practice during teacher time and learning how to work with a calculator to skip count. At Math and Writing, students practiced explaining their thinking with math prompts in their Math and Writing books. At Math to Self, students worked on review math and basic skills as well as building stamina and at Math with Someone, students played several games in order to practice skills (Greater Than and Less Than, Skip Counting on a Number Grid game, Even and Odd Numbers).

Next week, we'll finish up the unit by exploring counting change and review of all concepts from this unit. The Unit One test will be given on Friday, October 9th. A review packet was sent home on Friday. If you'd like your child to use IXL to practice skills for this unit, they should use any of the A (Counting and Number Patterns) or B (Comparing and Ordering) activities.

 

Social Studies

Last week we began our first social studies unit on Family and Communities. We are learning about families and we'll begin our study of communities, human and natural characteristics of communities, and transportation in communities. This week, we will be exploring maps and students will have an opportunity to make maps of their own.

 

I'm looking forward to another wonderful week!!!! Have a great one!