Weekly Update

Dear families,
We have had another productive and positive learning week in our classroom.

This week, the students continued working on their small moment writing pieces.  We are almost ready to publish!  The students learned about how authors add interesting action words, or verbs, to their writing. We studied many different books and identified the verbs.  Then we brainstormed other words that almost mean the same.  We learned that these action words often add more details and give the reader more information.  For example, we learned that the word "went" that is so common in our stories can be replaced by "flipped over" if we are writing about a sled that slid into a snow bank, or "ran" if we are writing about how we moved from one side of the basketball court to another.  The students came up with wonderful words!! 
This week, the students were also partnered up with a peer editor.  A peer editor is a friend who reads your writing and then provides feedback.  The students work together and learn from each other as they get their writing pieces ready for publication.  On Monday, we are going to create our covers and give our stories an interesting title.  We look forward to sharing these with you at our conferences later in February.

I started reading assessments this week and will continue next week.  I will assess all day Tuesday and Wednesday so Ms. Winter will sub for me.  We are so lucky to have Ms. Winter with us.  Thank you for helping us.  Next week, the students will start reading groups working on fluency and phrasing, in particular.  They will explore various short stories and reader's theater scripts and perform together.  There are no props in reader's theater and the children do not memorize their lines, as in traditional theater.  Instead, the students are encouraged to use their scripts, but focus their attention on their phrasing and intonation.  The students will also record themselves to listen to their own phrasing, and eventually we will perform our texts to other teachers, who will be invited to visit our classroom.

We will start a new unit on the Winter Olympics next week.  The students will learn about the history of the Olympics, the sports and geography.  The unit will culminate with a researched report on different aspects of the Olympics.  The students will have a choice to write about a particular sport, or an aspect of the games, such as the meaning and history of the torch, or the rings.

Thank you all for checking out our google doc for parent-teacher conferences the week of February 17th.  If these times do not work for you and your family, please let me know and I will accommodate your specific needs.

Have a great weekend,
Maria