Crittenden'S Corner
Weekly Updates from Room F7
Dates to Remember
- October 24 – 28…Character Counts/Red Ribbon Week
- Friday, October 28...College Spirit Day
- October 28…X-Ploration Day
- November 1 – 4…Fall Book Fair (Our class preview is Wednesday, November 2 from 11:00-11:30)
- Friday, November 4 - Spirit Day: Crazy Sock Day!
- November 11 – No School for Veteran’s Day
- November 14-18 Parent-Teacher conference week (no school for students on 14th, 12:45 dismissal on 15th and 17th)
- November 21 – 25…District Break – No School
Upcoming Birthdays
Angelina - October 15
Miss Crittenden - October 17
Vinnessa - October 22
Don't forget to write in your child's Write to Me journal this weekend! They LOVED reading the notes that you wrote this week :)
Creepside is Back!
The food truck Taco Taco will be here serving up delicious Mexican food, so come with your whole family and get into the Halloween spirit! Check your child's Friday Folder for your pre-sale ticket slip! :)
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C R E E P S I D E N E E D S C A N O P I E S !
Creepside needs to borrow Pop Up Canopies for our 2 nights of haunting. We need all canopies by Monday, Oct 17th. Canopies will be ready for return on Sunday, Oct. 23rd. Please check them in with the office (they have special name tags) and then leave them in the MPR.
Work days (scenery and props) are on Wednesdays between 10:00-1:40 in the MPR. Last “Work Sunday” is October 16th, 1:00-4:00 pm. Anytime you can stop by, the Creepside Team would love to have you!
We are also collecting CANDY DONATIONS for our exit treat. Please send in a bag of individually wrapped candy to school (no gum please). Also needed are donations of individually wrapped cookies, single serving packs of chips, and cases of 12 oz. water bottles. We are ghoulishly grateful!!
Please check your child's Friday Folder every Friday for important updates and papers! Unit 4 Phonics Guide is waiting for you inside! :)
The Importance of Questioning, Wondering, and Predicting
In researching comprehension strategies (strategies that help students to understand what they are being taught and what is being read), I have found that three skills are vital to a students active listening and learning throughout the school day. I will begin to teach these skills this month, and I will continue to review and stress them all year long. They are skills that students will need in order to deepen their understanding of concepts taught in first grade and beyond. These skills are being able to question, wonder, and predict.
Questioning is a key element in our reading standards. In both fiction and non-fiction text, students are encourage to question and answer questions about the text. This year we will practice not only answering questions in a text using evidence, but we will also LEARN how to ask questions about a text in order to understand it more.
Wondering is closely related to questioning. I love to encourage wondering in the classroom, because wondering means students are CURIOUS about a concept, which means that they are interested :). Wonderings could be directly related to the text or activity, or student wonderings could be connected with another activity in their life or some background knowledge that they have on that subject.
Predicting is an important skill for a myriad of academic activities. Predicting is taking what students know, and applying it with a good guess to an activity or a text. Predicting deepens understanding by having students think about what they know, and use what they know to make an educated guess.
You can help your child practice these skills at home! When reading a new book, or going to a new place, have your child brainstorm questions that come to mind when they read, ask them to tell you what they notice and what they wonder about. When trying a new activity or experiencing a new activity, ask your child to predict what they think will happen, or ask your child to predict what they think will happen in the book that you are reading at home.
Weekly Curriculum Update
Foundational: Students ROCKED their Unit 3 test on consonant digraphs today! They now know that a consonant digraph is two consonants that are stuck together to make one sound. They know which digraphs can come anywhere in a word (sh, th, ch), and which ones have rules for where they come in a word (wh, ck). On Monday, we will begin a new unit that looks at a new phonics rule: the bonus letter rule. The bonus letter rule comprises of this concept: to read the word puff, one would only need the letters puf. For the word hill, only the letters hil are needed. For the word kiss, only kis is needed.
However, in our language when a one syllable word ends in an f, l, or s, a second f, l, or s is needed in order to spell the word correctly. Students will be practicing recognizing words with bonus letters, and how to spell words with bonus letters. Please refer to your Unit 4 Phonics Guide in your child's Friday Folder for more information.
Literature:We will be continuing to learn about both fiction and non-fiction key ideas in text. Students will also be learning a few key comprehension strategies this month: questioning and predicting. Questioning a story or text can help students further understand the concepts covered in that text. Students will also generate questions based on stories and texts that they hear and read. Predicting is a HUGE aspect in reading comprehension. Students will learn that predicting is making a "really good guess" about the text based on what they already know. We will continue to revisit story elements (character, setting, problem/solution) and text features (title, photograph, table of contents, caption, label) in our daily lessons.
WRITING-
This will another week of students going back and "fixing up" their writing. We will be learning just how important it is to have spaces between our words, to have capital letters, and to have punctuation. Students will have an opportunity to go back into their stories that they have written in their binders and "fix them up." We will be reviewing what a sentence is and how to write sentences that make sense.
MATH-
We have done a great job learning addition strategies such as counting on and drawing number circles to reflect equations. This week, we will be learning about subtraction. Students will learn about several subtraction strategies (drawing circle drawings, and counting down). They will be learning how to match a drawing to a subtraction equation, and how to build a subtraction equation that makes sense. Towards the end of the week, students will be learning how to relate subtraction TO addition in order to solve equations.
SCIENCE-
Our study of nocturnal animals and their adaptations continues as we learn about the owl. We will be learning about the owl's adaptations and how it can survive in its habitat. We will also be discussing the similarities and differences between our first creature of the night, the bat, and the owl.
SOCIAL STUDIES-
Before we dive into our study of continents and the world around us, I want to teach students an important word that they will interact with a lot during their lives: diversity. Next week we will have an activity that helps students to understand WHAT the word diversity means and why it is so important to celebrate the diversity around us.
Have a Question? Contact Me!
Email: scrittenden@powayusd.com