What we have been studying in September/October:
Reading: In reading the students will become familiar with our daily
reading routines. The students will be given time in class to read
independently and conference with me about their books. Emphasis will be
placed on the Active Reading Strategies which include: Visualizing,
clarifying, connections, questioning, and summarizing. Emphasis will also
be placed on reading and understanding fictional stories.
You can help you child grow as a reader this year. Encourage your child to
read often and log his or her minutes each time. Take your child to the
local library and share your enthusiasm for books as well.
Writing: Throughout the first two months of school, the children will be
writing personal narratives, which are true stories from their lives. This
unit is meant not only to teach them qualities of good personal narrative
writing, but it’s also designed to help them develop stamina, focus,
structure, detail, a sense of purpose, an appreciation for conventions, and
an enthusiasm for writing.
You may wonder how you can help your child to prosper as a writer this year.
The first thing I want to remind you is that for most of us, writing can be
frightening. Please encourage your child by helping your child realize that
daily life brims with stories that deserve to be told. When your family
hears a noise behind the wall and you use a flashlight to find that the
noise comes from a squirrel who has been living there, remind your child
that this would make a great entry in his or her writer’s notebook! When
you get the chance to see some of your child’s writing, for now, it would
really help if you give that child what every writer needs above all: an
interested, appreciative reader. Read the child’s writing not as a judge,
but as a reader, paying attention to the content. If you do this, you will
make your child feel like an author, and you’ll make it much more likely
that your child will care about writing and will be ready to invest in the
hard work required to grow as a writer.
Word Work: Your child will participate in Words Their Way. Each child will
be placed in a spelling group according to his or her ability. The
students will be
given word sorts to practice with their spelling buddy and will be given a
test every Friday.
Math: Geometry is our first unit of study. We will be learning about
lines, line segments, and rays. We will be studying triangles and different
quadrangles. We will also learn the names of different polygons and create
perfect circles using compasses. In October we will collect data and learn
the terms minimum, maximum, range, median, and mode and display data using a
bar graph. We will review addition and subtraction of muli-digit numbers.
Toward the end of the month we will review basic multiplication and division
facts and spend a week on memorizing these facts.
Help your child discover everyday uses of geometry as found in art,
architecture, jewelry, toys, and so on. Encourage your child to practice
the basic math facts each night. Challenge your child to see how many
numbers he or she can identify in newspapers and magazines. Finally, have
your child look for different representations of the same number.
