Welcome to week 6! Thank you so much for a great turn-out at our Curriculum Night on Thursday. We had a good conversation and we hope that all of our parents came away from our meeting with a better understanding of our expectations this year.
On to the week...
In reading this week we are starting our language study. We are working with words that derive from the romance languages. Students will be learning how to break words apart into prefixes, roots and suffixes. They are also going to learn that these word chunks have meaning. We call this "Grocking", so when you hear your student using this strange word, you will understand a little bit about what we are doing. This is a long term unit of study that we will continue to work on over the course of the entire year. Another aspect of reading this week is our work with Maniac Magee. We are going to use the comprehension strategies that we have been using in isolation together to answer comprehension questions both in small groups and individually. The strategies we have been using are prediction, questioning and summarizing. The final part of our reading block is our RtI block. Some students will be pulled into small groups to work on decoding skills (breaking words apart by syllables and sounds). The rest of the students will be applying our comprehension lessons to books of their choosing.
In writing this week students will continue to learn new ways to gather ideas for their own writing by examining two different stories. Students will have time to brainstorm writing ideas and start writing two different stories. We are not yet asking students to complete one piece, rather we are showing them that it is ok to have several started before committing to one to take through the writing process. This reduces the stress that many students feel when they are asked to write. We are still using our writing time to continue to build our writing community as well so they feel safer to share their writing with their peers.
In math we will be concluding our subtracting and adding numbers with decimals unit. This week we will review a few of the concepts, do a little peer instruction to make sure everyone has mastered the unit, and take our end of topic test. The kids are working hard at their math and are beginning to turn the corner. We are seeing more work completed, more attention to detail, and a much greater amount of enthusiasm for math. These are all great signs!
Just two final reminders. We are still collecting conference forms and soon we hope to be sending home a time and date for you and your student to come in and conference with us. Be on the lookout for those. Lastly, remember that Friday is a teacher in-service day.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns so far,
Thanks,
Allyn Woods and Alaina Therriault
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