Week of December 3

Can you believe it's December?? Wow! Time is flying by. We'll blink an the Second Quarter will be done... Make sure to be practicing the items listen on the Detailed Progress Report. Also, we have quite a few Conferences scheduled, but there is still time if  you would like to schedule one with us. Send us both an email or write a note in your child's folder. :)

This week we have three Resource Days. Make sure to check your child's folder so that they are dressed appropriately for P.E. and not wearing brand new clothes on our Art Day. (Mrs.Phillips loves to paint with the students!!). Thursday the students get to listen to our 4th and 5th grade Chorus perform a Student Concert. Our Music Teacher, Ms.Broach, has worked hard with the students and the concert is sure to be GREAT!!  Friday we have Western Day!! If you need ideas for dressing up- Google "Western Day for Kids."  A lot of super cute images came up to dress your child with items you have at home. You won't need to go out and buy anything! 

Also on Friday, Maliyah will be bringing in Fun Friday Snacks and Mason will be joining the Six-Year-Old Club. :)

i-Ready Testing!! 

****We will begin i-Ready Testing in class this week. If you go on i-Ready at home and the test pops up, PLEASE LOG OFF. We want to ensure that every student has the same testing conditions and completes the test at school. It will take a while for all 38 students to finish the testing in Reading and Math... but when everyone is done we will share the results of each students testing.****

MATH
We are beginning shapes!! Bring on the 2D and 3D shapes songs by Mr R. He has a song for every 2D shape we test on. We will be discussing the properties of each shapes~ sides, vertices, etc. and signing all the SONGS!!
We are also still working on rote counting... there's been a lot of trouble getting from 29 to 30 and trouble getting from 49 to 50. The students are skipping numbers. So please make sure to be practicing at home. 

WRITING

We are still practicing sentence writing skills!! If you have not seen the rubric for how we compile your child's writing grade, please look back at last week's weekly post. :)

Also, make sure to remind your child to use the word wall. During our writing lessons we use it with the students and point out that each word can be found by the beginning/initial sound. 

SAXON/READING SKILLS

Saxon has us focusing on letter Kk this week. We will be reviewing the blends we've seen in past lessons (sl, sh, st, etc.) while also learning a few more this week. :) We have informed the students to code blends by coloring the two letters. We also chant... "A blend is~ 2 letters that come together to make 1 sound!!" 

We will be assessing beginning initial sound, syllables and rhyming pairs. The trickiest assessment for most of the students is syllables. If you notice your child is having trouble, make sure to check out Jack Hartmann's syllables songs.
Here are the Sight Words for this week. :) Make sure to be practicing sight words at home- either with the Sight Word Money or the slideshows on line. The students are expected to read 40 words this quarter!!

We hope to complete another Dum Dum Reading Challenge Book. Please note these books are for your child to read to you. We go over every page of the books and practice reading them in class together and alone with Sanford Harmony Buddies. Also, the book is returned to school once your child has read it to 3 people and those three people write their names on the back. :)  (If your child does not have access to three different people, your child may read it to you more than once or they can read it over Facetime to someone. We just need to see three names written on the back cover. 

READING

This week we have two stories. The first story is Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson. The vocabulary words we will be discussing are: lair, howls, coals, brew, divvy, slumbering, stokes, dank, whimpers, fret, fuss and the phrase "spin tall tales." **Make sure to discuss the vocabulary with your child. Understanding the vocabulary words helps your child's retelling of the story. **

We will be working in our Reading Journals with entries on predicting and retelling. 

On Thursday we will have a non-fiction story Let's Learn About Brown Bears. Before we read the story we will discuss our SCHEMA. :) Schema is information that we already know about a subject. So we will discuss and chart the schema we already have for Brown Bears. Then on Friday we will chart the information that we learned about Brown Bears. (We understand that the students may not have as much schema on this topic and that is OKAY! :) We will be able to learn a lot.)