Thank you for helping your child write down some interesting facts about the President of their choosing. We will be spending a bit of time this week sharing the facts with the class and the children will also practice reciting these lines in school so that we can incorporate them into our Presidential Celebration on February 25th. One of the songs we’ll be singing during the performance is the Presidents’ Song in which the children will be reciting the names of all 44 presidents! Attached to the newsletter this week, I am sending a copy of the words to the song so your child can practice at home. In addition, I am also sending a sign up sheet for refreshments for the reception following our play. If you are willing to donate something for our reception, please fill out the form and send it back to school with your child. I will then coordinate all of the donations and send you a confirmation note. Please be sure that your child practices their play line each night this week. It is my hope that all of the children will have their lines committed to memory by the end of the week!
During independent reading this week, the children will be focusing on 2 strategies. Our comprehension strategy of the week is Monitor and Fix Up. Readers who monitor their own reading know and use specific strategies when meaning breaks down, and fix their reading to enhance comprehension. Some of the fix-up strategies that we’ll be working on are: summarize the text, go back and adjust the rate at which we read, reread the text and think about what you’re reading, read on to see if the information becomes clear, ask for help. In addition, we will also be using the accuracy strategy of Use Beginning and Ending Sounds. While using this strategy, children look at the beginning letters in a word as well as the ending letters to help them decode an unknown word. Often, children will look at the beginning letter or letters and guess a word that may fit in the sentence without looking at the rest of the word. These reading strategies are also posted in your child’s reading log. Happy reading!
Look what we’re learning this week…
English Language Arts:
*Read Where Are My Animal Friends? By William Chin
*Comprehension Skills: Monitor and Fix Up; Sequence of events
*Decoding strategy: Use beginning and ending sounds
*Identify and use contractions with ‘not’
*To associate the sounds /j/ with –dge
*Comparative endings –ed, -est
*Review contractions and r-controlled vowels
*Writing– - using a graphic organizer to focus on a main idea
-write a descritpion
*Spelling: -ay spelling pattern; core words: there, she
Mathematics:
*Count forward and backward
*Make a model to solve problems
*Skip count by 2’s, 5’2, and 10’s
Social Studies/Science:
*Recognize the flag as a symbol of our country
*Determine the significance of American symbols