January News 2014!

 

Welcome back! Hope you had a relaxing break with your family! Starting in January our class will begin having Show and Tell days where your child is in vited to bring one favourite toy, object, or treasure to share with the class. Sharing Day will be every Thursday and your child will be asked to give the class 3 clues about their item (for example:  what is it made of, what it’s used for, colour, size, etc.) and once it is revealed tell us one reason why the item is special to them.  Children are welcome to bring an item every Thursday if they choose or may bring them only once or twice a month. It is entirely up to your family to decide.  I will be taking marks for speaking skills after we have practised a few times and will be looking for good volume, clarity, eye contact, and if your child is able to stay on topic and answer questions from friends. It’s a great way for all of us to learn more about your child and to build confidence in their speaking skills! 

Sight Words for January

6-10	13-17	20-24	27-Feb. 31
he	away	eat	blue
she	come	please	came
we	three	be	make
was	green	me	take
will	see	saw	name

 I want to send out a huge thank you for your support and enthusiasm for our spelling program! The kids are loving it and I’m so excited to see the kids using their lists during our word work time and scoring through the roof on their spelling tests! Way to go! Keep up the amazing work!  You may have noticed that the first 5 words on your list are also our sight words for the week or previous sight words.   Now that the kids are reading these top 5 words easily, it’s great to see them jump into spelling them in their daily writing! Remember the new lists will always come home on Mondays in the green scribblers and the homework gets returned on Fridays. I’m glad many of you have had a chance to try spelling city and love to get emails of spelling homework throughout the week.

Our phonics focus for the month is long vowels, we will reinforce the difference between short and long vowel sounds and learn about Magic E at the end of words which taps the vowel and makes it say it’s long sound, as well as Two Vowels Walking, the First One Does the Talking. These can be a little tricky and the kids need lots of practise both decoding and blending for reading AND writing. We will also focus on editing skills watching for spelling, meaning, capitals, spaces, and ending punctuation! 

In Math we are diving into our next big unit which is addition and subtraction to 12. Within this unit  we will be using all kinds of tools to help the kids get a concrete grasp of how doubles and eventually doubles plus or minus one makes addition and subtraction faster and easier to solve! (ie. If 6+6=12  then 6+5=11 and 6+7=13) We will also be revisiting how to count back. Just like we learned the strategy of counting on for addition we will reinforce counting back for subtraction! (7-5=2 , we would think 7, 6, 5).  I decided to save our 2D shapes and 3D objects unit to be taught alongside our Science Building unit.  

We are finishing up the senses unit first, focusing on hearing, touch and sight over the next few weeks.  After that we will be starting a very hands on and creative Building Unit.  The children will be transforming a variety of materials into recycled treasures over the next few months! 

In Social, we are continuing our mapping unit which includes learning cardinal directions, finding Lethbridge on a map,  landmarks, and rural vs. urban communities and more!

 

Important Dates to Remember!

Jan. 6	Welcome back! First day back to school /Library Day Mondays
9	Show and tell day
10	Spelling test
15	Hot Lunch Day School Council Meeting at 6:30pm
16	Show and tell day
17	Spelling test
23	Show and tell day
24	Spelling test
30	Show and tell day
31	Spelling test

UPDATE: We have a special presentation by SCIENTISTS IN SCHOOL  on Wednesday January 29 from 12:25-3:09.  I will be looking for 4 parent volunteers who are able to come in and help out with Science centres for that whole block of time.  If you are interested please send me an email! Thanks so much!