January 9-13

Hello!

It's nice to be getting back into the swing of things! We have been reviewing some classroom expectations this week...it gets tough when we have a lot of inside recesses.

Upcoming Events:

Monday, January 16th-Friday, January 20th-Celebrate New Directions Week!

Monday, January 16th-Family Night-Art Night 5:30

Wednesday, January 18th-No School-Staff Inservice

Thursday, January 19th-Family Night-Gym Night/Jump Rope for Heart

Friday, January 20th-Half Day

Reading: Readers are working hard to be in charge of their own reading. We are focusing on using the right tool for the job and doing a triple check by asking, “Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?” We’ve been using our reading strategies chart to help us set goals for which strategies we can use to help us.  

Writing: We are continuing to judge our collections. Students are very motivated to write their opinions about the “best in class” in their collections. We used our opinion checklist to help us set goals to add more to our writing. We learned how writers can disagree with each other respectfully and give examples and reasons for their opinion. We will be learning how writers can use what other people say (quotes) to make their writing even more convincing. We will be spending a bit of time editing and publishing these pieces at the end of the week before we begin writing persuasive reviews. Writers will be reviewing games, toys, movies, restaurants and anything else they are able to review. Writing folders will be coming home tomorrow to be decorated with ideas of things that students can review such as restaurants, movies, toys, places, or books.  

Word Work: The new words this week are: for, of, said, want, love.  We have also added the word because.  We are using the word because in our opinion writing and it will be helpful if it becomes one of our snap words!  

Math:  We will be finishing up our Place Value unit this week, with our assessment on Friday. We are reinforcing the concepts of adding a one-digit number to a 2-digit number, comparing 2-digit numbers and representing 2 digit numbers with ten sticks and circles.

Content: Yesterday in content we read two different books.  We drew pictures of our family and wrote about what we like to do with our families after we read the book Families are Different.  We also read When I Was Young in the Mountains.  It was fun to look at how things have changed.  Many were surprised that they didn’t have pencil sharpeners and that they had to get water from a well!  Later this week we will look closer at Families Then and Now and we will also talk more about our relatives.  

Let me know if you have any questions!
Have a great week!
Samantha