November 14th-November 18th

 

 Good afternoon Team Blowey Parents!

Today, students had a "Healthy Teeth" presentation from Mrs. Maine!  Ask your child what they learned about keeping their teeth strong and healthy.

This week in...

Spelling:

Team Blowey is making the transition to spelling at your own pace!  Today, we talked about what it means to be a responsible test giver and how to know when you are ready to take a spelling test (more detailed information in the newsletter that was sent home today).  Students were also introduced to their spelling game board.  The game board will be used as a way for students to track their progress.  The rest of this week we will be modeling and practicing this new system.

Reading:

We just started a new read aloud book called Mr. Popper's Penguins.  The book came highly recommended by a good friend of mine and so far we are loving it!  

Our new vocabulary words are:  serious, broken, personal, informs, and heal.  We'll be talking with our elbow buddies about what these words might mean and how to use them in a sentence.  When we finish our discussion, we'll listen to a story that uses all of these words.  When we hear a vocabulary word, we'll put a finger on our nose.

We will also be focusing on our ability to summarize stories and remember the sequence of events.  We'll be reading a story called A Trip to the Emergency Room and applying these skills.  

Our small reading groups will also be meeting this week to read some "good-fit" books together.  While we read together, we'll be practicing our decoding and thinking strategies that we got last week. 

Students continue their work during literacy cafe time as well.  They work on building their stamina, word work, writing, fluency, and comprehension.  This is a great time for students to work towards meeting their personal goals.

Writing:

Our new writing project is a "how-to" story.  Last week, Miss Blowey was taken over by an alien who needed to know how to make a soy nut butter and jelly sandwich.  The students tried to give directions but found that they needed to be more specific and give more details so that the alien (or reader) will be able to know exactly how to do something.  Right now, students are working on a fun writing piece called "How to Blow a Bubble".  When students finish their writing, they'll be able to work on a fun art project to go along with it.

As for grammar, we will be discussing a strategy called C.O.P.S.  This stands for Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation, and Spelling.  This is an editing strategy that we will be utilizing to help make our writing better.

Math:

Students are continuing to practice their fact fluency skills and working hard to meet their goals!  

We are also working on place value.   Our goals are to:

-Read and write 3 digit numbers

-Know what number is in the hundreds, tens, and ones place

-Know how many bundles of 100s, 10s, and 1s are in a 3 digit number

-Read and write 3 digit number names

-Read and write numbers in expanded form

-Compare two 3 digit numbers using < = and >

We're making great progress!  We've been practicing our goals with whiteboards, games, practice worksheets, buddy work, fun computer games, and soon we'll have some board games set up to help us practice as well!

Homework:

As you know, homework looks a little different this week.  This morning, students and I worked together to write down their personal goals and to pick which activities they would like to help them practice and meet their goals.

For more detailed information about how the new homework system will work, please read the newsletter that was sent home today.  If you have any questions or observations, please write them down on the homework or send them in the boomerang folders.

This is a trial run for homework.  A parent night will be hosted after Thanksgiving break.  More details will come soon.

I hope you all have a fun-filled week!