April 6 - 10

Enjoy these pictures from the past two weeks:



This week we started studying poetry and the class came up with some truly beautiful poems!  After reading and listening to several poems, we came up with a list of poem features which included occasional rhyming, alliteration, feelings, and made-up words.  The class also noted that poems are like songs without music.  I will post recordings of students reading their poetry aloud on here after the April break.  I will also send home copies of students' writing before the next conferences so you can see the creative work they have been doing.  We are working on writing for the entire 10-15 minute writing time, building up to a 20 minute stamina.  Feel free to send in any family favorite poems or poetry books for your child to share with the class. 

In math we continued to study place value in two digit and three digit numbers.  I noticed in the homework from this week that some students struggled with the math box about writing numbers with a seven in the ones place or tens place.  For example: in the number 57, 7 is in the ones place (5 tens and 7 ones).  In the number 75, 7 is in the tens place (7 tens and 5 ones).  Please review this concept with your child as numbers come up in your daily lives....

We also worked on counting groups of coins (pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters) both with abstract symbols (a letter in a circle) and with real images of coins (both heads and tails).  Most students are able to accurately identify the pictures of the coins and their individual value, but counting up the totals, especially over $1.00, are still challenging.  Please help your child practice the strategy of counting the largest value coins first and saving the pennies for last. 

For students struggling to keep the larger amounts in their head, it can be helpful to break the task up into smaller amounts and write down the subtotals as you go.  For example, count all the quarters (cross them off as you go) and write down how much they add up to, then count the dimes and add their total to the total of quarters, etc.  Practicing with real coins will make solving problems with pictures of coins easier.  Students should be able to quickly recognize the value of two, three and four quarters.  Most students know that 4 quarters = 100 cents (1 dollar), but they typically do not recognize right away that 2 quarters = 50 cents and 3 quarters = 75 cents. 

In reading we practiced four reading strategies in small groups:

1. Comprehension: listening to a book on tape or storylineonline and then using the inflatable retelling cube to isolate which feature of the story students will recall (characters, setting, problem, solution, events, or favorite part).  Some students struggled to use the retelling cube in a responsible way.  We are continuing to develop students' independence to work together on academic activities in a small group with minimal adult support.
2. Accuracy: choosing a word (or two) from a book and making new words by adding on to the end of the word (example: "work" can become "worker," "worked," or "works").  Most students did a good job choosing a word that could turn into new words with different endings!  Spelling was not a priority in this exercise, but it should help students attend to the whole word and not guess based on the first few letters.
3. Fluency: choosing a page from a book to practice reading aloud and then reading that page in front of the class during the next day's Morning Meeting, paying attention to the characters' feelings.  You might have seen some of these pages come home for practice.  Please help your child to read with appropriate inflection and in a voice loud enough for the class to hear!
4. Expand Vocabulary: choosing an interesting word from a book to use again later that same day in one's speech or writing.  I noticed that students tended to pick fairly common words for this activity (what, and, candles) so I will be challenging them to choose more unusual words next time.

The current word wall list will be coming home on Friday in the hand-outs.  Please take some time over the break to review the words with your child.  He/she should be able to automatically recognize the words (not have to sound them out or ask for clues) both in isolation and in the context of other print.  He/she should also be spelling those words correctly most of the time.  If you see your child misspell one of the words while writing, I suggest letting him/her finish the thought/sentence, and then encourage him/her to go back and check to make sure the words look right.  If they don't see the mistake(s), gently direct them to the word wall list as a resource.  Remember that recognizing the word accurately is an easier task than generating the word accurately!

While making time to read with your child is very valuable, it's also very important that your child have time to read independently each day.  Research shows that one of the main ways to help children become better readers is to give them ample opportunities to read and reread books at their independent level (no adult assistance needed).  We are working on building students' independent reading stamina up to 20 minutes.  Any time in your family's schedule that you can dedicate to your child's independent reading can make a big difference in their reading comprehension and fluency.

Thanks to all of you who have brought in many items for our classroom.  We have plenty of yogurt containers right now.  The "Creation Station" choice is still very popular and, as to be expected, we quickly go through the supplies in that area.  We would really appreciate re-stocking on any of the following items:

• 
  
  tape
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  glue sticks
• balloons
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  corks
• 
  
  wrapping paper
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  odds and ends (springs, gift boxes, fabric, etc.)