Post 21

REMINDERS: 

Conferences: It has been wonderful meeting with families in this round of conferences and I look forward to meeting with others next week. Please sign up for a conference if you have not already do so.

Water bottles: Please make sure to send your child to school with a sport top water bottle each morning that s/he should bring into class each morning to keep on his/her table to have easy access to water throughout the day. Thanks! 

Wow words: Please continue to help your child gather new words each week through their reading and your conversations at home and bring them in on Wow Word Wednesday. Here are links to an online dictionary (Merriam Webster for kids - Word Central) and our wow word worksheet in case you need a new one. This is an ongoing reminder for the year. Please make acquiring new words part of your home routine.

CURRICULUM UPDATE:

In reading we: 

• Continued reading books about friendship, charting character traits and events.
• Worked in our independent reading books to make predictions, ask questions and retell important events in order.

At home, talk to your child about his/her predictions, questions, and what is happening in their books that they are reading.

Next week, we will continue reading Ivy and Bean and begin our new unit on inferring and questioning.

In Fundations (Word Study): 

• We finished our work in unit 8, in which we we focused on ar and or r-controlled syllables.
• We began unit 9, in which we focus on the sounds of er, ir and ur. These are trickier, as they all make the same sound! Students are using the spelling options procedure (ask your child what this is!) to determine the conventional spelling of these words.  
• Our new trick words are picture, learn, and earth.

At home, please refer to the Unit 9 family letter to learn how you can support our word study work at home. Also, look though the fundations/word study section on my website. There, you will find all of the first and second grade trick words. If your child needs practice with these words, please practice through activities such as playing bingo, memory or through reviewing them on flashcards. Here is a link to a great website with different sight word games that you might like to try. 

Next week, we will continue our work in unit 9. 

In writing/social studies: 

• We continued our special writing project on Mexico. We moved our notes from our graphic organizers to our books, practiced using sentence starters for our introductions and conclusions, and heard our classmate's introductions and conclusions for inspiration.  

At home, talk with your child about his/her Mexico book.      

Next week, we will wrap up our Mexico writing project. 

In math:

• We solved addition and subtraction problems, sharing our strategies. 
• We used cubes to build numbers and solved addition and subtraction problems with them.

At home, present addition and subtraction problems to your child and have him/her show you how s/he solved it.

Next week, we will continue practicing strategies for solving double digit addition and subtraction problems.

Enjoy the weekend! Stay warm!