The Second Week - Sept. 20th

I was excited to meet and talk with all of the parents during curriculum night on Wednesday. Thank you for your thoughtful questions. If any other questions pop up while reviewing the jam-packed folder, just let me know!

Language Arts

The whole class has been practicing writing our full names to get practice with all of the letters of our names. We will continue to practice writing our names over the coming weeks as well. We also graphed our names by how many numbers were in each student's name. We found that we had most names with five letters!

Fundations - We have been introduced to three new letters, Tt, Bb and Ff, this week. The students have been practicing these sounds in various ways by sky writing (drawing air letters), tracing the letters in their workbooks, and writing letters on the dry erase boards in class. We've been working on our pencil grip and use our chant - grip, grip, pencil grip - to help remind us of how to hold the pencil each time we write. We will also begin sending our first homework practice pages for letters Tt, Bb and Ff next Tuesday, September 24.

Writer's Workshop - We read the book, All the Places to Love, by Patricia McLachlan and talked about how authors use ideas that are very important to them to inspire their writing. The students wrote and drew about a place that they love.

Math In Focus

We jumped right into our math program this week, Math In Focus. We practiced using numbers to 4 in various ways this week. We looked at pairs of items, how pictures and objects can be the same and different from others, and began using manipulatives to help aid us in our math thinking. 

Science and Health

We began talking about being safe during the fall and the height of our town's exciting time, the Topsfield Fair. We began by practicing writing our name, town, state and phone number. We will continue talking about keeping ourselves and others safe over the coming weeks.

During our morning meetings and other moments in our day, we have also been talking about making sure we're all safe and happy in our classroom. The students worked together to create a set of our own classroom rules this week and we illustrated what it meant to promise each other be kindr, help our friends, use walking feet, not hurt anyone on the inside or the outside, and to raise our hands and wait for our turn to talk. We will continue working together to create a classroom in which we're all feeling safe and are able to take learning risks together.

Reminders

If you plan to chaperon OR volunteer in our classroom, please be sure to contact Mrs. B. in the front office to complete a CORI check. 

Early release will be on Wednesday, September 25 at 1:15 pm.