Weekly Update
October 2nd- 6th
CONGRATULATIONS OLIVE!
Important Field Trip Information
We are SO excited to visit the zoo on Thursday! Thank you to those of you who showed interest in being a volunteer. I've already reached out to the two names that were landed on to be our chaperones.
Here are a few key details:
- We plan to leave school around 9:15 am and expect to return around 1:15.
- Students will each receive a new HFE field trip shirt to wear. The shirts will be distributed at school, on the morning of the trip. These were provided by the Eagle Alliance to make our students easy to recognize. Students may wear them over their normal clothes or change into them that morning. Please keep these for an upcoming field trip in the spring.
- Students will be divided into groups of 5 or 6 and will have a chaperone specific to their group.
- Chaperones will carry student lunches with them until their group decides to eat. If you are sending a lunch, please send in an entirely disposable lunch so that chaperones do not have to continue to carry things after lunch.
- Please pack snacks and lunch separately. We will eat snack when we return to school.
- It may be cool in the morning so students might want a jacket. As it warms up, students will wear them around their waist.
- We will be doing a lot of walking! Please have students wear sneakers or other comfortable shoes.
- Pack one small disposable water bottle for your child to bring with them to the zoo! (I usually do not let children bring their regular water bottles on field trips because they tend to get lost)
On Tuesday October 31st, Heards Ferry Elementary students will get to participate in Storybook Character Day! Please have your child select a character from a book to dress up as on the 31st. Students can not wear masks or have any weapons. Please have your child bring in their book on the day of so they can share who their character is and a little bit about them. You can have them practice saying who their character is and some information about their character at home. More info attached below.
Happy (almost) October!!
Can you believe we just finished our eighth week of school?! Students have quickly caught on to the new pieces of our schedule (Enrichment, Science lab, media center, etc.).
I first just want to share how much joy the class brought me this week as I told them about Mid- Autumn Festival which begins today. This festival is all about family reunions and eating mooncakes together. I shared with the class some history behind Mid-Autumn Festival, and we read the story, Thanking the Moon by Grace Lin. To see each child's eyes light up and their minds explode with curiosity and appreciation for cultures around the world made my heart so happy. Students made connections to their own lives and traditions they partake in. We practiced tracing Mid-Autumn Festival in Chinese characters and colored in mooncakes. A lot of students have been showing interest in wanting to try moon cakes! :) We also ended our week with a mystery reader! There are some important notes about next week, please read below.
Some key notes for next week:
- Monday: Students will begin taking their unit 2 math post assessment. Please see more info below. We will begin our IB Unit 1 Who We are Reflection.
- Wednesday: Picture day - we will be taking individual photos. Flyers were emailed to you earlier this week.
- Thursday: Field Trip to the Zoo! Please take the time to emphasize the importance of SOAR behavior - especially staying with the group and chaperone.
Math:
Click here for everything your child needs to know for the upcoming Unit 2 summative math assessment and resources. This includes things like identifying and naming 2D shapes (including real-life objects - circle, square, rectangle, triangle), positional words (above, below/under, beside/next to, in front of, behind), defining attributes of shapes (pointing to the side of a shape, pointing to the vertex of the shape), explaining how two shapes are alike and different, creating and naming 2D out of popsicle sticks or Play-Doh, drawing 2D shapes, composing a new shape out of 2D shape attribute blocks, sorting objects by color and by shape and counting how many objects are in each group. The next unit will cover counting sets of objects up to 20 - please practice counting and writing numbers with your student. These are important skills for later success in math, especially as we head into our third unit.
Home practice: Have students identify 2d shapes they see at home. Have them tell you how many sides and vertices there are. You can also have students describe the position of different items at home. For example, if you have a picture hanging on the wall above the couch, students could say the picture is above the couch. Or if a fork is laying next to a spoon on the table, they could say the fork is next to the spoon and the fork is beside the spoon. Please make sure students are practicing counting to at least 40 by 1’s, backwards from 20 by 1's and by 10’s to 100 every night. If your child can already do so, challenge them to try counting to 120. And then to 100 by 5's. Please also have students practice writing their numbers 0-20. We are aiming for those tricky teen numbers to not trick us as we gear up for unit 3! Students who need practice can also practice one to one correspondence using the counting strategies in the chart in my math resource tab. When students have mastered this, you can practice skip counting by 2, 3, 4, etc. and discuss odd and even numbers.
Writing:
We will continue to discuss verbs and how they are action words. We will talk about present tense verbs. We will respond to the books we read through writing.
Home practice: Have students practice sounding out words and writing down the sounds they hear on paper and draw pictures with details and label their pictures. Students can also practice writing a sentence about their picture using finger spaces between words and punctuation at the end. Ask your child about how they can make their labels longer (adding high frequency words - i.e. "rug" can be "the rug"). Ask about sentence patterns with high frequency words you can write on index cards some sight words and have your child arrange them to form a sentence structure (This is my/the/a ... , Look at me/the/that ..., Here is a...)
Reading:
We will introduce letters m, d, and g and the sounds they make. Students will be building CVC words, point to each letter, say the sound, and then blend and read the word (i.e. man, map, dad, etc.)
For whole group reading, we will read the stories: "I Love Bugs," "Pat" "From Caterpillar to Butterfly" and "Bugs All Around."
Home practice: Discuss these letters at home. m, d, and g. Give students words that begin with these sounds and have them tell you the sound/letter it begins with and then they can write the letter. Practice writing letters m, d, g in the correct formation.
We will be learning about the short vowel sound of /i/. We will practice writing the letters m, d, and g, as well as work on the sounds they make. Now that we have learned several letters, we can begin making words such as: Dan, dad, mad, etc. You can have students sound out these words and write them using lowercase letters. We will also be looking at different pictures and identifying the beginning sound in each word such as dime, deer, teeth, top, mix, mop. You can say these words to students and have them say the beginning sound.
Home practice:: Have students practice writing upper and lowercase letters and practice sounds of t, p, n, a, m, d, g. Students can also find things around the house that begin with these letters. Letter sound resource video
Social Studies: We will be reflecting on our first IB unit Who We Are all week. Students will be choosing one of the the various community helpers we've learned about to reflect on. Students will also be reflecting on good citizenship - what it means to be a responsible citizen. Students will also reflect on the learner profiles from our first IB unit - Communicator. We've had many discussions and activities about these topics and the students have shared so much insight with one another. We're explored communities from all over the world and compared and contrast them with our own. Students will be uploading and recording their responses on Seesaw, so be sure to check it out!
Final reminders...
- Be on the lookout for an email from me next week with a link for fall conferences (October 10th).
- The month of October's Cookie for character trait is thinker - inquirer.
- As it it begins to cool down, please make sure that your child's name is in any outerwear they bring. Jackets often come off as students run around at recess and do not always make it back inside. A jacket with a name is much more likely to find its way home!
- Please make sure that you are reviewing learned letters at home. Students are expected to read simple words consonant-vowel-consonant words using letters that have been covered. Please make sure you practice high frequency words and word families every night
Have a lovely weekend!
SSS Home Connection Letters
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