Mrs. Edelmon's Classroom News
October 28, 2013
Announcements
As we begin this last week of October, the children are looking forward to the Fall Party on Thursday. We will enjoy this week with some Fall and Halloween activities to celebrate the season. This six week grading period will end on November 8, so I will begin assessing growth in reading and mastering of math and writing skills. In the coming weeks, we will begin preparing for Special Person's Day on Tuesday, November 26th.
In recognition of the March of Dimes, we are asking the children to wear purple on Monday, November 4th. We will have a guest speaker from the March of Dimes at Morning Assembly that day. Thanks, in advance, for helping to show support for this organization.
Reader's and Writer's Workshop
The children are learning about reading strategies to help with unknown words. I have introduced Chunky Monkey where children look for chunks of words they know in the unknown words and Flip the Dolphin, where children try the short vowel sound in the word and if that doesn't work, they can try the long vowel sound. In the next few days, they will learn about Eagle Eye, Stretchy Snake, Lips the Fish, and Helpful Kangaroo. These strategies are associated with a particular animal to help the children remember the strategies to read the unknown words.
In Writer's Workshop, we continue to write and check our writing for capital letters at eh beginning of sentences, lower case letters in the other words, spacing between the words, putting lots of sounds in the words they write, and punctuation at the end of the sentences. The children have wonderful ideas to write about, and now they will learn to make their writing readable!
Math
In math, we are learning about additive patterns and continuing to practice addition and subtraction math facts. I am also introducing the children to measuring length and capacity. The children love playing First in Math. I have also shown them a math website, www.abcya.com. This has online math games for the students to practice the skills we learn in first grade. We will do some fun math attivities with candy corn and a fall candy mix this week.
Spelling
The phonics skill this week focuses on the short /u/ word family of -ug and-ump and the long /u/ word families of -ute, -ube, and -ule. Sight words are about, just, our, jump, and just. As we brainstormed words for these word families today, your child created a graphic organizer of the words. This table of words can be used for spelling practice this week as you choose items off the Spelling Menu in their red Homework folder. Thanks for your support in spelling practice at home. We have a daily phonics lessons based on the words that we brainstorm. With the list of words, you have the same words that we will be practicing with in class.