News for Nov. 21

Reading:  The children are learning about reading fluently.  Your reader’s voice should be smooth like when you talk.  We’ve learned that some words go together quickly (peanut butter and jelly) and shouldn’t sound like a robot when reading them.  The children are also looking for quotation marks to tell them if a character is talking and what his/her voice might sound like.

Finally, the children started their “word work” groups last week.  The children are in groups based on their phonic needs.  Each of the groups has a different word sort and does a variety of activities with it.

Math:  We’ve added the dime to our coins and will be adding with it.  The children are also learning about time to the half-hour.  We’ve also spent a lot of time on “frames and arrows”.  The children are given a rule (add or subtract) and apply it to figure out the next number.  The children also had fun learning how to program the calculator and we used it count up and back by 2, 5 and 1.

Writing: The past few weeks we’ve spent time on the importance of having spaces between words when writing.  The children have also been reminded to make their “tall” letters tall so we can figure out what it is (for example: an h instead of an n) This past week, we’ve discussed how to add dialog to a story.  

Upcoming Events:

Nov. 22-23 – Thanksgiving holiday:  no school

Nov. 26 – book orders due

Nov. 30 –speed stacking orders due

Nov. 30 – hotdogs should be on the menu

Dec. 10 – elementary Christmas concert

Canned Food Drive:  Our elementary is participating in a canned food drive to benefit area families.  If you would like to help, please send your canned or dry goods to school.  We have a special box placed near the elementary office.  Donations will be received until Friday, Dec. 7.

Welcome Ruby!

Ruby joined our class a few weeks ago.  Her family comes to our area from Florida.  She is a very sweet girl and the children have been so helpful to her!  We now have 12 girls and 14 boys in our class. 

 

Thanks for helping your child decorate a feather for our turkey!  He looks so handsome!

 

November News

Reading:  The children are learning about different reading strategies to use when they come to a word they don’t know.  They include chunky-monkey (breaking a word into chunks), lips the fish (getting our mouth ready to say the sounds), slippery snake (saying all the sounds in the word), eagle eye (studying the picture for a clue) and wise owl (what would make sense?).  We will be revisiting these strategies often and will add more as we go through the school year.  The children are also learning about the short vowel sounds.  This week we add the –ck sound. 

Math:  The children are studying odd/even numbers and number patterns (all the 2 counts are even, all the 5 counts end with 5 or 0, etc.)  Also this month, the children will learn about time to the half hour and add the dime to our money counting.

Writing: Each of the children has chosen a story to revise and we will be finishing that this week.  We’ve talked about having a space between words and when to use a capital letter.  The children are also revising to add details to either the picture or words.  We’ve been writing small moments (a true story about the child) and will move into writing about realistic fiction.
 

Thank you for helping with sending in coins the past few weeks.  Our class came in second place with a total of $287.81 collected.  Overall, our elementary collected $2643.27 for World Hunger Relief!  Amazing!

 

Halloween Party:  The children had fun at our party even though we weren’t able to parade downtown.  We did get to walk through most of the middle school and part of the high school and finished up by walking through the 4^th grade “wax museum.”  When we returned to our classroom, the children changed out of their costumes and enjoyed their snacks and a Franklin Halloween video.  Enjoy the pictures of our class below.  (these will be in color on the class blog.  Go to the school web page – www.mcbain.org, click on elementary staff pages and click on my name)

 

 

 

 

October Students of the Week:

Xavier R., Lydia T. L., Leah T. and Jadyn H.