Newsletter Updates for the Week of January 23rd

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Friday, January 27th—Report Cards Home, Homecoming—Wear Green & Gold

-Tuesday, Feb. 14th—Valentine Party—pm

-Friday Feb. 17th—NO School—PD for Teachers

-Monday, Feb. 20th—NO School—President’s Day

STUDENT OF THE WEEK: 

Our student of the week is Easton Short. Easton enjoys hunting, playing baseball, and playing with his dogs. His favorite movie is Rookie of the Year and his favorite book is Not Your Typical Dragon.  He likes to eat mac & cheese, watermelon, and pizza.  Two of Easton’s goals include: playing football and helping with his new baby, which I’m certain he will shine at both! Congratulations to Easton on being our Student of the Week!

SLEDDING PARTY: 

Hopefully we can rebuild a nice snow base on the playground and reschedule our Sledding Party.  We’ll just have to wait and see what the weather has in store:) 

REPORT CARDS & ASSESSMENTS:  

Report cards will be coming home with students this Friday. Students will be completing their DIBELS and AIMSWEB testing this week and I’m doubtful that I’ll have the results back in time to share with their report cards, but we will see:)  Also we are in the middle of NWEA testing, so those results will be shared with you a little later.  The report cards were completed digitally through PowerSchool for the first time, so as you look over your child’s report card remember that anything that is a √- or - is a skill that they need to work on, also be sure to look ahead to what their upcoming goals are for March.  If you have any questions or concerns regarding your child’s progress, please feel free to contact me.

READING:

This week our class will be reading stories about how living things, such as trees, change as they grow. Your child will learn to name the parts of a tree, such as trunk, bark, branches leaves, and roots. Here are some activities that you can do with your child to help reinforce the skills we will be practicing:

· Vocabulary—develop & amazing—draw a picture of a tree and encourage your child to tell facts about trees.

· Sightwords—are & had— Have your child practice writing these words and using them in a sentence.

· Category Words—tree parts—Have your child draw a tree and label the parts—roots, trunk, branches, leaves, etc.

· Phonics—Ee—Have your child think of words that have the short e and long e sound and make a list of each.

· Beanie Baby Strategies—This week we will use Chunky Monkey to read and write words with the en, et, ed, & ell word families & use Flippy the Dolphin to read and write words with the short & long e sounds. We will introduce Helpful Kangaroo who reminds us that if we are trying to figure out a tricky word, its okay to ask for help, after we’ve tried all of our strategies.

· Raz-Kids—We learned this app last week and will be using it to read ‘good-fit’ books in the classroom. You should have received a letter with information about how to access it at home—it is a great resource for young readers!

WRITING: 

This week we will wrap up our unit on Pattern Books by writing a story with a question and answer structure.  We will also continue learning about pronouns—he, she, we, I, it, they, etc.

MATH:  

This week we will continue to work on teen numbers—writing teen numbers, building them on ten frames and with base 10 blocks.  We will practice our problem-solving skills, as we use different strategies to solve number stories.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES:  

We will continue our study of Winter this week—as we learn about the different things that animals do during the Winter.