Hello everyone! I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures, my computer is not doing it’s job once again. But hopefully they will be added in soon! (Edit 11/2/2020: They have been added, woohoo!)
In Reading this week, students finished out the alphabet with Xx and Qq! We then reviewed letters Ff and Oo, this time focusing on the sounds they make. Students made big lists with all of the words they could come up with that start with those letters, which is so enjoyable for them. We will make our way through the alphabet once more doing this for each letter. We even addressed that the letter Oo makes more than one sound (because it is a vowel). This can be confusing, so we will continue to review vowels and consonants throughout the year. The high frequency words we did this week were ‘do’, ‘they’, ‘you’, and ‘look’! Students have been becoming experts at matching upper case and lower case letters. I am so impressed with their progress, and pointing out how far they have come in the 30 something days we have been in school makes them get the biggest smile on their face! This month I will begin progress monitoring the students so that we can see some concrete data for their progress in learning letter sounds.
This week in Math students learned about tally marks! They picked up on this concept super quickly. The trickiest part was remembering to do the mark diagonally when we get to 5! This also was a good opportunity to review sorting. On Halloween, students had a fun time doing a Halloween Tally Mark Scavenger Hunt. They had to find the hidden pictures around the room and count the tally marks in the picture, and then write the corresponding number on their paper. It was such a fun challenge! As a reward they got a new red pencil, curtesy of Red Ribbon Week! Next week in Math students will start working on 2D shapes and number words.
In Social Studies we started talking about jobs in our community! Mr. McKay, one of the school’s guidance counselors, has started coming into every classroom once every other week to help teach students about different jobs and how they all impact and are valuable to our community. This fits perfectly with our Social Studies curriculum as we will be discussing this topic until the end of 2020!
Ms. Byron, the other guidance counselor, also came upstairs to have a conversation about feelings and how they can affect our ability to listen.
In Science, students learned about the life cycle of a frog! They were very interested in what the eggs of a frog looked like and why they were so small and squishy, unlike bird eggs. They also were very curious about where a tadpole’s tail goes when it grows into a frog. Next week we will continue to learn about frogs and start learning about the life cycle of other animals and what names we use for different species of baby animals.
We also learned about the color pink this week! While doing our pink poster we watched a read aloud of Pinkalicious by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann.
Students were so, so, so excited about Halloween! They got popcorn and cookies as a Halloween treat and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas. They also received treat goody bags provided by the school. Although it was sad that we couldn’t wear costumes, I hope you all had a fun time enjoying the holiday however you did!
Next week, we have our Pajama Day on Monday, November 2nd! We will also be watching the movie Coco in the afternoon to teach students about the Day of the Dead (a Mexican holiday that honors ancestors who have passed away). Tuesday, November 3rd will be a Flexible Instruction Day because of Election Day. I will send packets home with the students the day before to be completed for credit. The packets must be completed by Friday, November 6th. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Love,
Ms. V