During the week we learned about spiders and discussed factual vs. opinion writing. The students each wrote one fact about a spider that they recalled from our non-fiction book. It is important to point out the differences between facts and opinions in your conversations with your child. We will be starting to do more writing VERY soon. For some students this will be difficult, but we try to encourage them to listen for their jolly phonics sounds and just write what they hear.
Next week we will introduce the letter R. During the week we will read about things that start with r like...rabbits, rocks, and rain. Students are asked to bring in a rock on Wednesday, Oct. 23, for our science lesson. The rock should be able to fit in your child's hand and maybe have some interesting attributes....or it can just be a plain rock from outside. Our main focus during the week though, will be rhyming. Students will practice making rhyming words with partners, make a rhyming dog, and play games with rhyming words. We of course will read lots of books with rhyming patterns and discuss how they make the stories sound. Jolly Phonics is almost over. Hopefully you have been practicing the sounds and motions for the letters each week. At this point, we are doing a lot of blending together of the sounds. At home, you can slowly say the sounds of words and ask your child to blend it together to make a word, or you can ask them to write the sounds down that you say. Many of the kids have become very good at this skill, they just need practice and confidence.
During math, we will be wrapping up our number sense unit. Our focus will be on greater/less/equal for the next two weeks. We will look at sets of objects and ask that students can use MATH TALK to explain which set has more/less and HOW they know that. After number sense we will begin to study 2-D and 3-D shapes.
I am already assessing math skills for first quarter. Explaining what we are thinking is still a skill most of the students are developing. We will work on this all year. At conferences, I will share with you a snap shot of your child's school performance and we can discuss any concerns that we have together. This week I sent home your assigned conference time. Please send back this form quickly so I can confirm your scheduled time. If you need a different time, please let me know and we can work on finding a time that works for both of us. I am sorry to say that I do not have any more evening conferences available. Those time slots fill up quickly!
It seems the weather is changing. With colder weather comes more clothing items. Please be sure to label all your child’s items and work on putting these things on independently. It is very helpful if your child can pull their sleeves back when inside out and zip/button their own coats. Thank you for practicing these skills at home.
Have a super weekend!
