Miss Jones's Newsletter
January 2016
What we have going on in Room 150...
Getting back in the swing of things...
What we are working on...
Nightly Reading Logs and Weekly Sight Words
Please continue to read every night with students in their reading logs. After every 10 books, students receive a free pizza pass!!! Please also make sure to review sight words every night! These words are so important for students to know and to be able to recognize to build reading fluency!
This month we are working on...
Math
*We've been practicing Counting 1-50 by 1's.
*Counting to 100 by 10's
*Practicing Writing Numbers 1-10
*Learning 2D and 3D Shapes - Squares, Circles, Triangles, Rectangles, Hexagons, Cube, Cylinder, Pyramid, Cone, and Sphere
*Be able to identify shapes by the number of sides each shape has. Also being able to sort 2D and 3D shapes
*Compare two numbers between one and 10 presented as written numerals
*use the key vocabulary more than, less than, fewer, the same, most, least
*Count forward from any given number.
Literacy
*Using Print Concepts when reading stories (Author, Title, Illustrator, where to start reading, direction to read, what a period is, and retelling the story.)
*Learning Letters and their Sounds
*Practicing Writing Letters
*Phonological Awareness (understanding of spoken words, syllables, sounds)
*Practicing checking for understanding after reading/listening to a story by being able to tell the characters, setting, problem/solution, and what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story
*Questioning & Inferring Skills when reading or listening to a story. Also being able to understand and use question words and prepositions.
*Starting to work on being able to tell the difference in a noun and a verb
*With prompting and support, being able to identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text. (Persuasion, Informative, and Entertainment)
*The Daily 5 Literacy Block
Fundations
*We have now learned all the letters and their letter sounds so we have moved on to blending sounds together to blend and segment words. For example, cat would be segmented as /c/ /a/ /t/ as the beginning, middle, and ending sound. We also call this Rollercoastering our words, however in a couple weeks we will move from rollercoastering words to tapping out words just using our fingers instead of our entire arms!
Writing
*Opinion Writing
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference (My favorite book is…)
Science/Social Studies
Science
Forces and Motion: Understanding the positions and motions of objects and organisms observed in the environment.
Essential Vocabulary for this unit:
Zigzag, above, below, between, in front of, behind, on top of, straight, round and round, back and forth, fast and slow, under, fast, over, slow, top , bend, behind, straight, classify, sort, and beneath.
Social Studies
Civics & Government
We are also working with understanding how individuals are similar and different.
Economics and Financial Literacy
Understand basic economic concepts (Needs vs. Wants).
Hour of Code

Right before we got out for break we started off our Hour of Code work with Mrs. Eggett, our Digital Lead Teacher, who knows all there is to know about how to code! Though out the year we will be working with her learning how to create and use codes to do all sorts of fun things with technology in our room! I loved watching everyone get their first experience with coding and working so well together to get their teams through the coding maze. Later in the year we will actually be writing codes that will direct a robot to move through certain paths and positions! Everyone did a great job of listening and creating codes to help their teams reach the end of their coding paths!
Working Hard During Fundations
High Tech/High Touch- Forces and Motion

First we started off with some projects that involved magnetism. We used cars with magnets and race tracks to watch the magnetism pull the car through the tracks and also used a magnet to direct a paperclip through a race track.
Our next experiments were based on Newtons Law of gravity. His law states an object at rest wants to stay at rest unless another force is applied (like a push or pull) once something is in motion. Once in motion, it will want to stay in motion until another force stops it. This is the idea of gravity and inertia. We used the cup/bowl and table cloth as well as the egg in a bottle which demonstrated this law of gravity using gravity and air pressure. Our favorite experiment of the day was the egg in a bottle experiment!
Our 3 final experiments with Asteroid Amber from High Tech/High Touch were a sock filled with beans where students ran to a line on the ground then let go of sock at a specific point (line on the carpet) when running & the sock continued moving past the line. They also worked on an experiment where close pins and a cup was used to demonstrate when force is pushed upon a stable object it will then start to move (drop into a cup from a resting place). Finally our last experiment was a tornado in a bottle using tornado tubes! Everyone had a wonderful afternoon and it was definitely a fun Friday, to say the least! Thanks again to Asteroid Amber and everyone at High Tech/High Touch for such an exciting and educational afternoon!
Homework

Upcoming Events and Dates for November
January 12th - Spirit Night at Barley's
January 18th - MLK Day, No School!
January 19th - Teacher Workday - No School for Students!
January 25th - Homework Packets start being sent home every Monday and Due every Friday!