Week of January 3

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a restful break full of family and fun!  A big THANK YOU to all who donated items to our Winter Party.  They kids had a great time!  Our next party will be the Valentine's Party.  We have an ice cream sundae party that is always a great time!  News on that party later...

We will be ready to hit the ground running tomorrow.  With it being a short week, we have to fit five days worth of learning into four.  The spelling words are beginning to be more difficult so extra practice might be needed at home along with the practice we do at school.  A great website you can use for extra practice at home is spellingcity.com.  You can create an account and enter our spelling words and it will create different activities for your child to do.

During the next two weeks I will be assessing for second quarter report cards.  The end of the quarter is January 12th.  I will be reviewing different skills this week to refresh their memories.

In a few weeks I will be administering the Winter FAST assessment.  I shared the Fall Benchmark scores with you all at conferences.  The benchmarks to be met this winter are:

41 words per minute
48 sight words per minute
15 nonsense words per minute
30 sounds for word segmenting

The best way to help your child achieve these goals are to listen to them read each night.  Complete the Making Words homework with your child every Tuesday and Thursday.  Practice the 50 sight words on the white piece of paper located in your child's reading bag (students who have met the goal already won't have this in their bag).  If your child has anything extra in their reading bag, please listen to them read it.

My goal is to never make your child "read as fast as they can."  I always tell my students to read like they are talking.  Paying attention to punctuation and the meaning of the story is all a part of reading fluently for comprehension.  Our primary purpose in reading is understanding what we read so accuracy is very important.  A lot of times students will read at a slower pace while they are trying to become accurate.  Accuracy comes before fluency.  So....with that being said, if your child makes a mistake while reading, here a few things you can say to help them along:

Try that again.
Did that make sense?
Did that sound right?
What was this page about? (If they can't tell you, they can go back and reread the page)  Do this sparingly (maybe once a book) as you don't want to stop the flow too much.  If it's a shorter book, just ask them what was the story about?

Not all words can be sounded out so telling them to sound it out may not always work.  Many times they correct a mistake by using meaning to help them figure out a word.  I also teach them to read in phrases rather than word by word.  One way to prompt for this is to tell your child, "Put that all together."  You can use this prompt if you hear them reading word by word.

These are just a few tips that may help you at home!  Thanks for all you do to help your child!  It's true that it takes a village. :)

This week:

Reviewing rules and expectations.  We will practice some of our routines to make sure the classroom flows smoothly after being gone. :)  We will also talk about the word "perseverance" and how sometimes things may be difficult but we have to keep trying.

Reading - questions, character and setting, phonemic awareness, triple consonant blends, contractions

Spelling - See Week 15
Bonus Word - support

Vocabulary - connection, support, possessions, relief, typical

Math - addition strategies and concepts (making a ten, decomposing numbers, adding three numbers, doubles plus 1)

Monday - No School
Tuesday - Art, Making Words
Wednesday - Music, Library
Thursday - P.E., Making Words
Friday - Art, Spelling Test, Timed Test

Star Student - Ella Melone











Thanks and here's to a great 2017!