The Week of October 13th 2017

Upcoming Events

Parent/Teacher Conferences and Student Early Release Day

October 18th

Just a quick reminder that on October 18th  our students will be sent home at 11:30 so that we can meet for our conference. At our conference, we will talk about your child’s fall assessments. We will also talk about learning goals for your child in reading, writing, math as well as social and emotional goals. There will be chairs set up outside my classroom door. Please sit and wait there, and I will greet you as soon as I am finished with my other conference. I'm looking forward to meeting with all of you!

Scholastic Book Orders are due October 18th

No School October 19-20

Reading Homework Begins

October 23

Reading bags need to be returned each day. Please fill out your child's reading log with them. If you have any questions please give me a call or email me!

Classroom News

Reading and Spelling Homework

Next Monday, your child will bring home their reading bag. Students will pick 4-5 “just right” books to bring home and read. My expectation is that they read these books to you for about 10-20 minutes per night. Please record their reading on the book log that is in their home-folder. Please feel free to read additional books you have at home or any Raz Kids books, and include them on your child's reading log.  If your child is reading a chapter book at home, just have them read a chapter or two each night and record that on their log. Remember to return reading logs in your  child’s HOME-FOLDER, and I will take them out and give new logs out as needed. 

Spelling homework will begin November  6th.  Each week, I will send a packet home on Monday in your child’s home-folder. It will include a brief outline of our learning targets and background information for you to help at home. Your child will have a word sort, and a trick word ( sight word) practice activity. Packets should  be completed at home or at homework club, and should be returned on Friday.

Readers’ Workshop

This week we will begin working in small reading groups. We have spent a lot of time learning the expectations at our literacy stations, and the children LOVE their BINGO boards. The students know how to read to themselves, buddy read, work on their small moments stories and listen to reading on Raz-Kids. While they are working independently, I will begin working with small groups of students on reading skills. The students are grouped by their reading level. During our reading groups we read fiction and nonfiction texts, learn decoding strategies, and practice sight words. The following day we meet again to reread and talk about the book. We also ask and answer questions about the book. In the coming weeks, we will begin responding to these questions in writing in our reading response journals.

Writers' Workshop

WE LOVE WRITING!! One of our favorite times of the day is during our Writers' Workshop! Last week read some awesome mentor texts to help us work on our introductions. We read Shortcut by Donald Crews and noticed his interesting way of beginning his story. We worked on envisioning how we could revise our own introductions. Students are working hard at writing their stories in order and have done a great job sharing their writing with their peers.  We also learned some spelling strategies to help us be brave when we really want to write those long, exciting but hard words to spell!!

Waterville and Belvidere Long Ago and Today

This week we unpacked our school kit from the Vermont Historical Society! It was amazing and your children loved it! They were so surprised to see how a teacher would have dressed in the 1800's and we all had fun checking out my dress! We were so amazed to see the way books looked, how children wrote and the way they children were disciplined in the 1800's.  The children made their own horn books and loved writing with their quills and ink! Thank you to Wade Chivington for volunteering to make the quills and ink!

 

Shelburne Museum Trip

Thank you to all of the parents and family members who came along with us on the trip! We had such a great time! The weather was windy but beautiful!  Our children were well behaved and totally amazed by the things they saw! It was magical seeing their faces when they hand dipped their candles, made their own ice cream and took an old fashioned spelling test!! This was the perfect trip to really help them see and experience what life was really like back then!