Hi There! Our second week of school was definitely a success! We are getting used to the routines and procedures of our day to day business, but there is still much to do. Here are some updates in our various subject areas:
Writing: We are currently working on and "All About Me" book that will debut on Open House night (9/15). This beginning-of-the-year project helps me get a feel for the ability levels of the kiddos. After this project is completed we will start reviewing what makes a sentence.
Reading: After completing a lot of procedural items (how the classroom library works, etc), I spent a lot of time last week getting to know the students as readers. They took an interest inventory, went pretend shopping in a book order, and were tested on sight words. All of this baseline information is so important when we begin to launch guided reading groups in a few weeks. We also began to work on the Daily 5 this week and will continue to do so next week. We will also kick off our genre, reading strategy, and comprehension strategies next week.
Math: Mrs. Tuten has been hard at work with the kids in reviewing addition and subtraction strategies. No new learning has taken place yet - just a review of first grade learning. Next week, the students will begin reviewing numbers to 100.
Science: This has been such an exciting subject! Mrs. Tuten is kicking off the year by piloting our new science FOSS curriculum. This new hands-on approach is very exciting and powerful. The kiddos are learning about plants and animals and have been busy planting different kinds of seeds this week. In the coming weeks, they will continue to learn and observe these plants! Be sure to check back soon for a post with pictures about science!
Spelling: This week we took our baseline spelling assessment, a test that gives the kids some more challenging words to see what kinds of patterns they have mastered and which ones need more attention. We will begin our regular spelling routine next week! More information will come on this soon.
Handwriting: Mrs. Tuten started out our handwriting activities, too. The students have a workbook that emphasizes the four S's: size, shape, slant, and spacing. Last week, the students took a pretest to show off there skills. In the coming weeks they will continue to practice letters that have the same kinds of shapes.
Please continue to check in for updates on our activities. Also, please remember that Open House night is Thursday, September 15. Mrs. Tuten and I look forward to seeing you then!
Today we had a lot of fun talking about metacognition - a big fancy word for thinking about thinking. We read the book, Don't Laugh at Me, by Steve Seskin and added bits of "lettuce" and "tomato" to our salad as I read aloud. The lettuce bits represented thinking and the tomato represented the actual reading of the text. As the students and I both added pieces of lettuce as we thought about what we read, it soon became quite clear that our salad had more thinking and lettuce in it! Reading can't just be decoding and reading the words. Our salad demonstrated that THINKING has to be involved! Otherwise reading is meaningless. After we finished the book we worked on the poster to the right because sometimes you just need a visual aide to trigger your learning! The kids did a great job understanding that reading is a marriage of the text and thinking. Real reading happens when you think about and reflect on the words on the page. I am anxious to see the students try out their own reading salad as we continue to read throughout the year!
