With the new year comes my favorite part of the school year. That would be a good solid 8 weeks of teaching time for me and 8 weeks of learning for the students. I find that the kids come back from the Holiday break refreshed and ready to learn!
This newsletter is to give you an overview of what we will be doing for the next 8 weeks of school. You can check out my blog for weekly pictures and updates.
LITERACY
(Reading, Writing, and Spelling)
For reading I will continue meeting with groups on a weekly basis. You may be seeing some books come home with your child for them to read to you. These are books that your child has already read in his or her group and practiced reading in class. Please be sure to return the book within a week.
Our next reading unit is called Becoming Experts: Reading Nonfiction. The first 2 weeks focuses students’ attention on growing knowledge as they pay attention to details, put parts of text together, and question texts. The following weeks students will learn to tackle tricky words and develop their vocabulary as they navigate nonfiction text. The last weeks will focus on setting up readers to grow knowledge across texts as they read texts, comparing, contrasting, and connecting information across text and text sets.
Our next writing unit focuses on writing nonfiction. In this unit students will write about areas of their expertise, something that they already know a lot about. Using Mentor text from our reading unit, students will study the craft of nonfiction writers and use those features in their writing. Students will elaborate more and learn how to write for readers, anticipating their questions, and hooking their interests. Students will experiment with different kinds of nonfiction writing.
**Students will be using their Teeny Tiny Topic Notebooks to list things that they know a lot about. Ideas are people, places, activities, animals, hobbies, etc. We will be brainstorming in class as well.
In spelling, we will continue learning Trick Words and focus on learning the different long vowel patterns. We will also spend a lot of time learning rules for adding suffixes -s or -es, -ing, -ed, -er and -est onto base words. Please be sure that your child is practicing his or her words every day. In addition, I will begin sending home a skill practice sheet home with your child for homework to give your child more practice with these important skills.
MATH
Please refer to the parent letters being sent home throughout the year for math. I will begin sending home math practice sheets home on a weekly basis for more practice as part of homework.
SCIENCE
Our next units are Sound and Light. We will be learning about Sound first and then Light. The essential questions for sound are: How are different sounds made and how can sounds be changed? Students will understand that sound energy can be produced and changed in different ways. Students will know that sound is caused by vibration.
TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL STUDIES
Over the next few months, Mr Baron will be meeting with small groups of students to research different cultures as part of our Social Studies unit, Small World. Although we won’t formally begin this unit until March/April, some groups of students will begin before that. Groups will be choosing a culture and learning about a certain aspect of that culture (food, customs, school, home life, etc). Mr Baron will lead them through using digital tools to gather information and then collaboratively create a digital presentation to teach others. We will be sure to share the presentations with you as each group finishes!
HOMEWORK
Starting next Monday I will no longer be sending home a reading and Fasttmath log. However, children should still be reading nightly and doing 3 lessons of Fasttmath at home. Instead I will be sending a spelling practice sheet home and a few math practice sheets for additional practice. I had originally said that I would not be sending math sheets home as Fasttmath would be the homework. However, there a several students that are done with their facts and as math becomes more challenging, students will benefit from more practice. Just a reminder that homework should be no more than 20 minutes a night Monday through Thursday. If you have any questions, please be sure to email me.
Have a Happy 2017!
