We have had another fantastic week together in our 1st and 2nd grade classroom. I hope you and your child have had many opportunities to chat about all the things we do and explore every day together. Thursday folders went home today. I hope you all received the note from Ms. Beeken, our amazing art teacher. Thursday folders also contained a booklet about the stages of the monarch butterfly that 1st grade mathematicians did together in math class. If your child did not bring his/hers home, it will remain in the classroom a little longer. Some children wanted to add more details and share them with friends. Please check your child's Thursday folders every week and send them back to the classroom on Fridays empty. You get to keep everything inside.
We will start homework next week, our first full week. Homework folders and Book Bags will come home on Monday. Your child is expected to read for approximately 20 minutes each night and write something about his/her reading in our Reading Log, which is located inside our Homework folders. Your child only needs to complete one sheet per week and write about the books on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The Homework Reading Log gets signed by the parent at the bottom of the sheet and returned to the classroom on Thursdays. Thank you. I am looking forward to reading your child's entries next week. If you wish to print out additional reading logs or provide other opportunities at home for your child, you can access our printable section on our wiki. Click to here access directly. Our regular reading log is linked there as well.
In Reader's Workshop, the students have begun to explore our classroom library, discuss how we choose books and learn what readers do when they read books. We have learned that readers read quietly in one spot and look at both the pictures and the words. Reading must make sense, so in many ways reading is thinking. We will continue our discussions and practices next week as we develop strategies for helping ourselves develop reading stamina and self-sufficiency as we decode, chunk, sound out and read texts together and in small groups. Formal reading groups have not started yet, so your child will have some free choice in the next couple of weeks for selecting books for the Book Bags. Please discuss the book choices with your child, as we have learned that there are many different reasons why we choose the books we do. Some people choose books because they wish to read a particular author, or learn more about a character, others choose particular books because they are interested in the topic or genre. Reading assessments start next week, and I have requested a sub for our classroom. I know the sub quite well, and she is familiar with the 2nd graders and our classroom so the students are in great hands.
Here are some pictures from Reader's Workshop this week:
In math, first and second graders started their first unit on bugs. In this unit they will learn about number sense and the differences between repeating and growing patterns. Since I share math students with other classrooms in my first grade classroom, I will create a separate math wiki, where specific math-related information will be shared and communicated. More information will follow.
I hope you all had a great week. Have a restful weekend.
Regards,
Maria
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