Friday, January 17, 2014

212 Newsletter

Phonics:  Over the past couple weeks we have been focusing on long vowels that can be heard in cake, rope, and bike. This week our focus was on the open vowels, long o and long e which can be heard in the words buffalo and me. We practiced building different words with long vowel pattern and took a peer spelling test at the end of the week.

Reading: The past three weeks in reading we have been talking about the elements in a story which include: characters, setting, problem, and solution. We read the story The Little Red Hen and identified the story elements. We had a great discussion about the hen and why she does not share the bread at the end of the story. This week we practiced the reader’s theater story Looking for the Muffin Man adapted from the song “The Muffin Man”. We practiced using intonation and reading with expression.

Writing: We continue to focus on writing personal narratives. A personal narrative has a beginning, middle and end and always has a problem and resolution. Ask your child about some of the topics we have written about in our personal narratives.

Math: We have been learning about place value. We worked with cubes, longs, and flats to help understand place value, ask your child to explain these new terms. In math this week we did lots of comparing and contrasting of two digit numbers. Each student cut out a set of animal cards, which included the height and weight of various animals. We compared different animals to find out which animal weighted more. Students used base ten blocks to add larger two digit numbers together. We also talked about the symbols <, less than, >, more than, and =, equal to. The whole class caught on right away to the <, > symbols. We had fun turning the symbols into fish mouths, where the fish mouth always wants to eat the larger number. 

Gingerbread Man: The gingerbread man is still missing! We have received postcards of sightings of him throughout the United States. He has been seen in New York, Missouri, Arizona, and even Canada!

AIMS Web Test: Last week Friday was a whirl wind day of testing of both the Reading and Math AIMS web test. Everyone did a great job and put in their best effort. I was very impressed with how the class handled our flexible schedule for the day.


No School: Don’t forget -- no school next week Monday January, 20th

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