November 8, 2013
newsletter
up and coming...
* no school Monday, November 11 (I asked that this last homework be turned it on this day but had forgotten there was no school. Homework will be due Tuesday the 12th.)
* mes de la patria celebration Tuesday, November 12 at 2:00. Your children will be performing the Kuna song, "iba nuedi." Please send your child in blue jeans and a white t-shirt.
* Thursday November, 14 we will be following our Monday specialist schedule so we will have library and p.e. Please send your child in their p.e. uniform.
literacy
This week we started to introduce 2 café reading strategies: main idea and detail and using non-fiction text features. This is in preparation of our upcoming science unit: Plants and Animals as well as our upcoming literacy unit: The Amazing Animal World. We have begun looking at non-fiction texts to learn about animals. We began researching animals in technology and will focus on the classification (mammal, fish, bird, amphibian, or reptile), habitat, where the animal lives, what it eats, how it moves, and its life cycle. To help your child at home look for non-fiction books about their animal.
math
We made graphs in math this week and used dominoes to practice counting. The students were able to identify domino parts and not only add them to make a whole but also take a total number and find the missing part (subtraction!)
We will be taking the unit 3 assessment this upcoming week and starting unit 4 the following week.
spelling
We as teachers spent the past week analyzing the spelling assessments of the students. We have found that while most students are able to spell correctly the ten words we were sending home, it wasn’t always being utilized in further writing. The focus will therefore shift from word memorization to identification and application of rules. We feel this will provide a more solid and balanced skill set that addresses reading, writing, and spelling. We will dedicate the upcoming several weeks on long vowel sounds as it is a particular challenge for native Spanish speakers.
Students will write the spelling rule in their agenda whereas before they were writing ten specific words. Their homework will ask them to find more words that follow the rule. The spelling test will continue to take place on Fridays and most words will follow the pattern with a couple exceptions of patterns already introduced and related to the current pattern.
Thank you in advance for your patience and support during this time of evaluation and transition.
social studies
As a culminating event for our unit on Society and Identity the students presented their stores to their classmates and we shopped! Each student received two dollars in pennies, nickels, and dimes, and bought both goods and services from their friends. They had so much fun! As soon as the first store was out of goods and services I stepped in and sold more paper so they could create more goods and services. As demand got higher I raised the prices much to the children's dismay! What a sight! They were shocked and some only bought more when the pieces of paper went on sale. I loved seeing those insights into their personality.
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Email: aryder@isp.edu.pa
Website: isp.edu.pa
Location: ISP