With three weeks to go until the holiday winter break, Room 10 is buzzing with anxious anticipation and excitement!
Trimester 1 has come to a close and with that I've wrapped up our first round of literacy and math assessments. I am looking forward to meeting with families this week to discuss each child's progress. Progress reports will come home to you on Tuesday of this week.
Please know that I consider these meetings collaborative in nature so don't hesitate to bring your questions and/or concerns along. The conferences are scheduled for 20 minutes and I do my best to keep to that timeframe. Please know that on occasion I may run a few minutes behind. If that is the case, I thank you for your patience.
At the reading table, the children are learning about a wide range of reading comprehension skills and strategies, including how to orally retell the sequence of events in a given fiction text they've read, or the key information in non-fiction. We have been exploring "character traits" and how to describe characters based on their actions, behavior and feelings. Additionally, the children are learning how to respond to broader, more complex questions that focus more deeply on "why" and "how" questions. They are learning how to locate "evidence" in the words and pictures to make predictions and to support their understanding. Reading comprehension is a long, multifaceted learning curve for all young readers and one we will continue to focus on all year.
In terms of reading fluency and word attack skills, I am encouraging the children to "make it match" and closely attend to be sure what they've read looks right, sounds right and makes sense. This type of questioning encourages readers to think carefully about their reading, and it raises their overall independence and efficiency in self-correcting their errors. We use this same language during writer's workshop to be sure our writing reflects the meaning we hope to convey.
During math, we have continued to work on addition/subtraction story problems, including a range of tools and strategies for solving problems in an efficient and accurate manner. You may not see as many math "papers" coming home, but please be assured that through hands-on learning, games and paper/pencil practice we are doing LOTS of math each day. I will share the children's math journals with you at conference time to give you a better understanding of where we've been and we're heading with math concepts. Some key concepts we've focused on for solving addition and subtraction story problems include:
- Understanding the overall concept of Part / Part / Whole
- Use of various tools: counters, tens frame, part-part-whole mat, counting on/counting back strips, number lines
- Use of various strategies: counting on, counting back, thinking addition to subtract or subtraction to add, using a "close fact" to solve another one, using "doubles" (4+4, 3+3, etc.) to solve a related fact
We are also continuing to learn about place value and coins during our daily morning meeting time.
Here's to making our way through the next three weeks of growing excitement! Happy Hannukah to those celebrating this week!
_____________________________________
Last week, we spent time digging into the history and traditions of Thanksgiving. The children were surprised to learn that Pilgrim children were asked to wear a hat and stand during meals, and they were not allowed to speak unless spoken to by an adult. We talked about the ways things have changed since then! I challenged the children to "eat like a Pilgrim" during snack. Despite lots of quiet giggles, they were eager to give it a go.
 |
| Pilgrim Snack Time |
We wrapped up our week with Crazy Hair Day. It was a silly day all around, despite some of the blank looks on a few faces!
 |
| Crazy Hair Day! |