During our morning meeting this week, we are working on greeting each other and making eye contact as we do it. We have been working on greeting each other with a right fist bump and being confident about which one is our right hand. Many children know the difference but still defer to me to help. I am working on having them identify it without my help when they know! We continue to work on not talking when it is not our turn. We are practicing using eye contact for the two children who are doing the greeting. We began playing a new game to work on our sight words called four corners. In each corner of the classroom, there is a sight word. We each choose a corner while I count backwards and I pick corners (with my eyes closed) until there is only one player remaining. We will work on some strategies as we play this game more.

We grew as readers and writers this week as we explored non-fiction text related to the states of matter. We worked on identifying the different states of matters with our bodies as the atoms. Ask me to demonstrate it with our family! We used cheerios to demonstrate it on a paper foldable. We also sorted picture items into their different categories depending on their state of matter. We explored the states of matter with a couple of experiments including diet coke and mentos. We also used an empty water bottle, vinegar, baking soda, and a balloon to explore how things react to each other. Ask me about it!

During our writing time, we worked on a thank you note to our families for coming to student led conferences. We have really been working on isolating sounds in words, especially those vowel sounds and writing them in short cvc words. I am including a video that we have been practicing long and short sounds with.

During our independent time, we are working on using our resources to be independent writers. We continue to practice using Words I Know book to help your little one use it to spell words (sight words, common words) correctly. We talked about the book being in alphabetical order and identifying where a word might be if I wanted to use it. We are also really working on adding spaces between our words and adding a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and punctuation at the end of a sentence.

This week, we reviewed our words. We have been playing four corners to help us practice! We are working on using all of these words appropriately in sentences as well as identifying and writing it. You can also work on your child's fluency by combining sight words to make sentences to read such as I can see a ________________ or I have a ____________________.

Words We Have Learned:

• a
• I
• see
• can
• the
• we
• to
• like
• and
• you
• go
• my
• said
• little
• is
• my
• it
• are
• have
• here
• dog
• went
• what
• he
• she

During math this week, we worked more with subtraction using bears, ten frames, and cups (caves). We worked with our fact fluency up to 10. Book buddies visited us to practice many of the math games that we have learned including Top-It, Growing Train Game, Disappearing Train Game, and Growing and Disappearing Train Game. We cannot wait to teach you at our student led conferences! We worked with addition and subtraction using a number line as a math tool. We also listened to Domino Addition and talked about the math word sum which means total. We used dominoes to make addition sentences. We also made an edible domino snack and had to tell the sum before we could eat it!

During our small group time, we finished up our rotations from last week, worked on writing our numbers from 0 - 30, and practiced for our student led conferences.

• My favorite book we read this week. Can your child identify the difference between a fiction and non-fiction book?
  
• Make a connection in a story you read - can they tell you about something the character did or had happen to them and how it made them think of something that they have done or has happened to them?
• Can they use their schema (what they know) to make a prediction when you are reading a story at home? What can your child infer when they look at pictures of the book?
• Skip count by 5's or 10's to 100! Use nickels or dimes to practice.
• Skip count by 2's to 20.
• Give your child a number. Is it even or odd? We are working on understanding the difference.
• Count backwards from 20 to 0.
  
• Sort loose coins - can I identify the different coins? What's their value?
• Play Top-It! As you play, talk about the numbers and practice good sportmanship! Use math words such as greater than, less than, equal, how many more, how many less, etc.
• What does (+) mean? What are some other words for addition?
• What does (-) mean? What are some other words for subtraction?

Greetings Monroe Families! It is that time again... testing time! I am beginning the process of looking for Test Monitors. It is not a hard job and does not have to be a big time commitment at all! All you have to do is attend test monitor training and pick which days you would like to be a monitor.

Tests Monitor Slots (can pick one or more!):

• Monday, April 2nd 8:00-10:00
• Tuesday, April 3rd 8:00-10:00
  
• Wednesday, April 4th 8:00-11:00**
• Thursday, April 5th 8:00-11:00**
• Friday, April 6th 8:00-11:00
  
• Tuesday, April 10th 8:00-11:00**
  
• Wednesday, April 11th 8:00-11:00**
• Thursday, April 12th 8:00-10:00
• Thursday, April 12th 12:30-2:30

**We need significantly more volunteers on these days. All times are approximate because it is not a timed test-- will likely be much shorter!

Test Monitor Training is offered at the following days and times (you only have to attend one). Your children are welcome to attend. It should not take longer than 30 minutes.

• Monday, March 26th at 8:00
• Tuesday, March 27th at 3:00
• Thursday, March 29th at 12:30

If you would like to volunteer your time or have any questions at all, please email me at skirk2@norman.k12.ok.us or give me a call at the school 366-5927. Thank you so much for all you do for your students and our school!

With gratitude, Sarah Kirk

Thursday, March 15th - Student Led Conferences

Friday, March 16th - No School

Monday, March 19th - Friday, March 23rd - Spring Break - No School

Tuesday, April 24th - Monroe's Arts Festival

Wednesday, April 25th - Field Trip to Science Museum

Due to the fact, that our Spring conferences will be student led. I will only be scheduling individual conferences with families who I need to talk with one on one without children present.

If you are interested in scheduling an individual conference, you can email me and I will work on getting some dates and times that work for us both. My expectation if you schedule a conference is for your concerns, questions, etc. lead the conference. There will not be another progress report until following the conference. I will be doing these conferences before student led conferences so that my time that week can be devoted to those. If you have any questions, please let me know.