Saturday, January 28, 2017

"Brushing" up on our Skills

Owl-Ways Learning. . .

Tap it out!
In Fundations, we began to focus on tapping.  Tapping is another way of saying "sound it out". When a student reads or writes a word we are encouraging them to rely on their tapping skills.  Below is a picture which will help you understand how it works. We will continue to work on tapping and review the uppercase letters next week. 

 

Now that we've learned all of our lowercase letters and signs; students get the chance to be the Drill Leader and Sign Leader. 







Teeth-able Moments
 
During morning meeting we read some toothy-tales to accompany our Tooth themed emergent reader and poem this week.  We incorporated our theme on teeth into our writing center and wrote about the steps to brushing our teeth. The real life example made it authentic for students to complete their writing successfully!  

Check out our Brave Volunteers read our poem of the week and Emergent Reader: 








 To end our week on teeth we used TOOTHBRUSHES to paint!!! 

Painting to Raffi's Brush Your Teeth made it even better!!


Star Quality Work
Our new star quality work board is up! Students are awarded a gold or silver glitter star on outstanding pieces of work.  These are not just for neatness but for effort too! Take a moment to celebrate if you see a paper come home with a special star on it. 



Teacher Talk. . .

Sight words
We've had another successful week of sight words.  We have learned 15 words thus far. Next week will be for review.  This means there will be no new words added to your child's sight word books, but rather another week to practice and reinforce the words they've learned thus far. Some activities you can try beyond reading and spelling the words can include: 

-Use/write the word in a sentence. 
-Build words with playdough, clay or magnetic letters
-Write words on a white board or ipad
-Create another set of flashcards and play go fish or memory match.

We will continue to assess students on Fridays. On the back of your child's cards you will see a checkmark, symbolizing your child has successfully read and spelled the word. After 3 checks, we will no longer assess them on the word, but rather note as mastery. Please take notice of other notes, such as read the word but could not spell.  


Star Students!
Our final 5 students got a chance to complete our star student shares. The class has come up with some new descriptive adjectives to describe their friends.   These include: Good Sport, peaceful, writers/readers, tall, and bright/smart.  By doing this exercise, students have widen their vocabularies and enhanced their word choice during writing. 





Instructional Writing
We will be talking and writing a lot about instructions and procedures next week. I look forward to hearing our students' procedural shares during our morning meeting.  Please let me know if you need any help with this task. We will also be focusing a lot on writing next week.  We want students to begin to trust themselves and be excited by writing! After all....everyone is a WRITER and READER! Reading books at home is just as important as having your child write. Your child can write notes to you and your family, make lists, or even make up their own stories! Best way to get your child to write is to give them choice...choice of paper, pens/pencils, markers, or even topic!  


Upcoming Events. . .

Monday. . .Library Day!

February 1st. . .Valentine's Day class list sent home. 

February 2nd. . . 100th Day Capes sent home. 

February 3rd. . . Our First Mystery Reader!!

February 14th . . . Valentine's Day

February 16th. . . 100th Day



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