Sept. 16-25

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Dear Parents,

 Part of the math homework this week is to write the numbers by 10’s, 2’s and 5’s.  As your child is writing them they need to pay attention to the direction they are writing the numbers as well as what they think the number really is.  There have been a large amount of students who are writing the numbers backwards as well as reversing the letter.  For example they will think 31 is 13.  They are using the 100’s chart the right way to add and subtract but if they don’t understand that the 3 is in the 10’s place and the 1 is in the ones place they will get the wrong answer. We will continue to use the 100’s chart but we are going to stop and talk about the place value of the numbers.  I have taught the students that when they are doing story problems they are to do 5 things.  1.  Circle the question in the story problem. 2.  Write and equation.  3.  Circle the answer.  4. Show their work.  5.  Explain how they got the answer.  They can say I used the 100’s chart but they need to say I went up 1-10 space and over 3 ones.  They can also draw arrows to show what direction they went.  And other way to figure out the problem is to draw pictures. They can draw pictures and show how they added or subtracted.  We are still working on following these steps and it usually takes awhile for them to get the hang of it. 

Reading:  This week we continued to work on recognizing who the characters are in the story and started to talk about the setting.  We talked about how some stories have more than one setting and it can change several times in a story.  Most of the class did a their first summary page.  They were impressive. In our small groups I help them with word attack and how is the best way to figure out what the word is.  We look at little words in big words, we look at chunks, and we skip it and read on and come back.  We look at the pictures and try to figure out what the word could be by what we have already read.

Spelling:  Our new list is the long A sound using VCE pattern. Some children would benefit from using magnetic letters to manipulate the letters.  The list has both short a and long a patterns.  We want the children to be able to distinguish the sounds they are hearing.  And other helpful hint with spelling is to have the children use a different color of pencil and enlarge the letters of the part of the word they missed.

Science:  Our caterpillars hatched and we let the go.

Social Studies; we had a visit form the Fire Station.  They brought their truck and we got to look inside.  We also talked about Fire Safety and drew pictures that will be entered in a contest.  The winning ones will be put on the Fire Truck for the rest of the year.

Art:  We drew pictures about Fire Safety.

All of my scores have been entered into skyward if you want to check on grades.

Sept. 19-23

We had over half of the parents come to our parent meeting on Wednesday.  Thank you for the support.  I hope you got some ideas on how to help your child this year.  I am sending home the handouts to the parents who were unable to attend.  The orange handout with the holes punched out is to help you with reading strategies while you listen to your child read.  The homework folder would be a good place to keep it so you can refer back to it as needed.   As I corrected the math homework I could see that some parents were teaching their child to add the traditional way.  We will learn how to do this but not until April. We are using the 100's chart to figure out the answers.  There is a copy laminated on the homework folder and a larger one  may be downloaded from my blog under math.

Reading:  Our main strategy we worked on this week was figuring out the characters in the stories we read.  We talked how characters can be animals that take upon human characteristics.   One of the first questions on our weekly comprehension assignment is to name the characters.  They get points for using the name of the characters from the book in their assignment.

Math:  We used the 100's chart to figure out subtraction problems.  We talked about  how the numbers need to get smaller (not larger or bigger) in order to figure out if we should move up or down and to the left or right when we subtract.  Most of the class is doing find with this concept, but there are still some who are needing extra help.

Spelling:  Our spelling test used short a,e,& i sounds and ending chunks.  The students were also expected to write the sight words in a sentence.  Some of the children did a great job and some need to make sure they practice their sight words too.

Social Studies:  We colored the United States of America and answered questions about the land and oceans that surround it.

Science:  Our caterpillars have made their chrysalis.  We are just watching them to see what will happen next. 

We had a fun week with the Read-A-Thon and the Walk-A-Thon. 

September 12-16

Remember our Parent Meeting this Wednesday at 7:00 in our classroom.  Only parents and guardians please.

Last week in-

Reading: We worked on how to figure out a word when we do not know it.  Some of the strategies we worked on were to look for little words in big words, sounding it out, look at the pictures, does it make sense, skip it and then go back and see if it makes sense.

Math:  We used the 100's chart to figure out what 23 + 52= By counting down by 10's and going across by 1's.  Some of the children still are counting 1 number at a time.


Science:  We are keeping a log on our caterpillars.  we think they made their chrysalis.

Social Studies:  We colored a the oceans and land on a picture of a globe and talked about the equator, North & South Poles.

Read-A-Thon Parent Meeting

Dear Parents,
Monday is the school wide Read-A-Thon.  I forgot to let you know about it.  I am sorry.  There will be no treats this year.  The children can bring blankets, pillows and books to read.  I will be bringing some big blankets and do some activities with them.  If the weather is good we will read both outside and inside.

Also, I am having a parent meeting on Wednesday, September 14th @ 7:00.  I would love to every child represented.  Thanks,
Shiree Kitchen

I hope you had a fun Labor Day Weekend.
Reading: Last week we practiced shopping for "Just Right Books". The children taught other children the three steps to finding a "Just Right Book".  1.  They can not make more than 5 mistakes on a page.  2.  The book should be interesting.  3. They should be able to retell the story.


Math:  We played: Can You Guess My Number" using the 100's chart and a number line.  We practiced "Friends of Ten"and filling in the number chart 1-100.

 Science:  We prepared for our caterpillars to arrive.

 Social Studies:  We looked up the temperature of different cities in the 7 Continents and focused on the North American Continent.

Make sure you do your homework.  Follow the green instruction page in your homework folder.

Spelling Test is Friday and Book Orders are due on the 9th. To order books on line the activation code is HCVHL.