Newsletter Updates for the Week of September 25th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Thurs. September 28th—NWEA Testing—Math

-Friday, September 29th—NWEA Testing—Math

-Friday, September 29th—Progress Reports Home

ITEMS NEEDED: 

Please send in a gallon milk jug (empty and rinsed out) and a full roll of toilet paper for us to use for a couple of fun art projects—we are excited to begin decorating our hallway and classroom for Fall!

ASSESSMENTS: 

We are currently in the process of doing our beginning of the year benchmarking assessments. We’ve completed our Math Recovery Assessment and this week they will be doing DIBELS for Reading. This week we will also be going to the computer lab to complete our NWEA testing for Reading & Math. It seems like a lot for these little ones, I know, but we will ‘learn’ the process together and the only way to measure growth is to have a starting point:) I will be sharing all of your child’s assessment data with you in the near future and we will be coming up with a plan for growth together.

READING:

We’ve quickly made it through introducing ALL of the letters of the alphabet and now we will slow our pace a bit and focus on one letter each week This week our reading lessons will focus on the letter Mm and we will introduce a new sightword—the. Our focus story is What About Bear? Which we will use to practice building our listening and comprehension skills. This week we will introduce 2 new beanie baby strategies: Questioning Owl who reminds us to stop and ask ourselves questions about the story while we are reading and Spinner Spider who helps us remember to ‘make connections’ as we read.  At the end of this week, students will receive new materials in their book boxes that they can read during Read to Self time, which means they will be bringing home their books that you provided at the beginning of the year. This is our first, of many, reading milestones that we will reach this year!

WRITING:

We will begin learning about ‘small moment’ stories this week. We will investigate how writers use uppercase and lowercase letters to make words, and complete a picture, letter, and word sort.  We will write about what the trees are doing in Fall and use our imagination to create a class book based on Mercer Mayer’s book There’s a Nightmare in My Closet.

MATH:

We will practice describing and comparing shapes, as we focus on triangles. We will also play several games with dot cards as we practice identifying and matching different quantities of dots, as well as comparing which card has more and which card has less dots.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES:

This week we will continue reading and talking about the changes that occur in Fall. We will have a special visit from Scrappy the Squirrel who will tell us what he’s up to this time of year AND we will conduct a fun experiment with acorns.  Our elementary character trait this month is KINDNESS; we will be reading several books related to kindness and compassion and practice showing kindness to others at home and school. They are all trying very hard to earn their ‘kindness token’ this month.

I will send home blankets this Friday; please wash and send them back for rest time next week.