Newsletter 11/19

READING
Most mornings we begin by writing the “Daily News” together on the board. The students dictate sentences of interest – such as the super star of the week, who’s absent, a special activity we have that day, etc. This is an important reading and writing exercise as they see that the spoken word can be put into print. We are also learning about a capital at the beginning of the sentence, punctuation at the end, and leaving a space between the words. Individual students often get to go to the board to write the beginning letter we need or the whole word.
The big book we read this week was SHOES FROM GRANDPA. When Jenny’s grandpa buys her new shoes, everyone in her family buys her something else to wear, but not what she truly wants. The rhymes and repeating words made this fun.
A new alphafriend joined us for the letter B, Benny Bear. We added a new high frequency word (popcorn word) – like. We can read and write many sentences now with our words – I, see, my, like.
We will be finishing up the family theme by Thanksgiving break. We have been reading about lots of families and writing about our own. We’ve read many Thanksgiving books that the children can now read. Books that use a very patterned language are a great reading tool for reading fluency and building confidence in the reading process.

MATH
We continue to review counting, number recognition, and sequencing numbers 0 – 20 through number card activities.
The basic language of probability was introduced by discussing likely, unlikely, certain, and impossible events. We used the book “And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street” that features unlikely or impossible events. We used a “probability tray” to make predictions using the basic language of probability, such as “I’m sure that I will get a red” or “It is impossible to get a blue.”

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES
In our family theme we have explored what families are, how family members care for each other, and how to resolve conflicts with family members. It has been healthy for us to acknowledge that families are alike in many ways and different in many other ways.