September 27

As the week draws to a close I would like to share a few things that we have been doing in the classroom this week. This week has been kind of a catch up/review week.  Each day we have been talking about a certain aspect of reading and reviewing our phonics.  We have been reviewing characters, setting, the order of a story and the author's purpose.  Each day your students have picked a book that they have read out of their book bags and done a small activity to reflect these topics.  We will always be reviewing these topics as we read stories throughout the year.  Today we read "Chimpansneeze" and talked bout the author's purpose.  We came to the conclusion that the purpose was to tell us a funny story and to entertain. We also touched on what poetry was and how it tends to use rhyming words.  Next week we will be talking about the main idea.  I have also been meeting with each student individually to make some assessments and talk to them about their fluency and sight words.  As you read with your students remind them of voice inflection with exclamations and questions.  I have also noticed that some of us need to slow down when we read or try to read in a more consistent manner.  I am also going to start sending home a new reader this next week.  It is hard to believe that we are already on our second book.  It has a rabbit on the cover.  You may see the first book, the one with the mouse on the cover, come home for extra practice.  If your student can read every story in that book fluently with very little mistakes then they are right on target.  We are stressing reading because it is needed for everything, even math.  This week we are also going to begin some more intensive writing.  We are going to begin to talk about the 6 ways to write.  We will also be talking about adjectives.  Today we talked about proper nouns and sentences needing capital letters and punctuation marks.  I believe we have finally mastered the topic of capital letters and punctuation marks.  In math we have been talking a lot about place value.  We are focusing on ones and tens.  Tomorrow we are going to introduce the topic of adding the tens and ones in more ways than one to make a number.  For example, take the number 34.  You can make 34 by 30 + 4 = 34, 20 + 14 = 34 and 10 + 24 = 34.

ps-Just a reminder that next week is a shorter week.  There is no school on Friday.  Enjoy the Fall Festival if you make it down there!