Weekly Newsletter

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Dear Parents,

Thanks for sharing your wonderful children with me! I am truly enjoying them and all of their different and delightful personalities. We are just two weeks away from SEP conferences! Wow that was fast! I left my schedule wide open hoping to accommodate your schedules better. If you still have a conflict please call or send a note and we can make other arrangements. I am still tweaking a few things that are new to me this year so thanks again for your patience. In all our learning the biggest part right now is to listen. I walk everyone through everything that they need to do. If the children are not listening they will get frustrated by how quickly we move along.

Reading – I have started my reading testing for our report cards. It takes some time and while I do this we have whole group reading instruction. We will then return to small group instruction. Please continue to READ, Read, read with your child. It is truly the best way to help the children become great readers. This reading can be BY you, WITH you (shared book reading) and BY them (children reading independently). All types of reading counts as reading for the children:)

Spelling –I think that Mrs. Bangerter has finally helped me get the new spelling program going. A little further explanation in my own words about what has come home and how it will work. I have to tweak the Words their Way program so that I feel good about what I am doing. On Monday’s I review with the students a new “chunk” (for example “ick”) we will use this to make many words through different games and activities. We look for this chunk in our reading and writing as well. Our spelling test will be 5 to 10 words that are made from the “chunk” of the week (for example: sick, pick, flick) it could be any word using that chunk. These are not on a “list”. I will also give an additional 5 to 10 words from our 100 word list, our math vocabulary or any of our direction words. Those will be part of a list. On Thursday’s a black note book comes home for you and your child to use to review the weeks “chunk”. I sent home a sheet with ideas of how to use the chunk review. If you still have questions call me or we can talk at conferences.

Math –We are ready to take our Block 2 math test and will be working towards taking our first benchmark by next Friday. Your child should be able to count, identify, and write numbers 1-50 by 1’s, 5’s, 10’s and 2’s. We are working on doubles, greater than, less than and identifying a nickel, penny and dime by name, black and white picture and value.

Writing-We have recently found out that as part of our writing curriculum we need to teach opinion writing, narrative writing, information giving writing as well as writing letters. WOW- that is a lot! Please encourage your child to write me a note and I will write them back, write a story for our class that they will be able to read. (Remind your child if I get 24 in one day we can’t read them all on the same day )

Misc.- Our first two star student weeks were awesome! Thank you so much! I hope that your child is enjoying school as much as I am. Please let me know if there are any concerns or situations that I may not know about. You truly have wonderful children! They are amazing to me!