Good Morning Parents,

Thank you for your continued support in our classroom.  You have been doing everything from providing a helping hand inside the classroom to supporting student educational needs by taking the time out of your busy schedule to read a book, play a game or simply asking them about their day.  Students greatly benefit from parents like you who play an active  role in their learning career.  Thank you for that.

This week, we will kick-off our Writer’s Workshop by continuing to learn about the art of storytelling and its components, paired with planning our own stories page by page.  Parents are naturals at scaffolding(supporting) children to re-create events.  For instance, a child and her dad return from the park, and the mother says, “What did you do at the park?”  The child says, “I swinged,” and the mother replies, “Did you?! Did Daddy push you on the swings? The child nods and says, “Daddy pushed me high.  I touched the tree.”  The mother nods and retells the story.  “Wow.  Daddy pushed you on the swing!  You went so high that you touched the leaves on the tree.”  This re-creation of the story is essential to learning how a sentence in standard English should sound and supports a child’s ability to write stories in a clear and cohesive way.

In Reader’s Workshop we will continue to build good habits and read Emergent storybooks.  Two of the “Good Reader Habits” we will focus on this week will be activating schema (“I have a connection” or “That reminds me of…”) and asking questions (I wonder…” or “How come…?”).  Mo Willems will still be our author study focus.   Ask your student which Mo Willems book has been his/her favorite and why.  We have read Knuffle Bunny Too, Pidgeon Wants to Stay Up Late, Pidgeon Finds a Hotdog, We Are in a Book, Leonardo the Terrible Monster, Don’t Let Pidgeon Drive the Bus, The Duckling Gets a Cookie!?, and Time to say “Please”!.  It’s been a great adventure!

In Fundations, we will learn the letter and keyword sounds for letters “v” and “w” this week.   You can create games with letter sounds and letter recognition with cut pieces of paper.  With the “cards” you can write the letters of the alphabet.  Once the cards are labeled, give your student some of the cards.  You can flash these cards quickly at each other quickly to see if the opponent can identify the sound and letter.  With each correct answer the player gets a point.  This is a game that is simple to create and as a parent you can help scaffold your child’s letter and sound fluency.   

We are still exploring the different regions and history of Native Americans for our Social Studies Unit; this unit will continue until Thanksgiving Break.  We will start out our week by continuing to learn about the Native Americans of the Northwest and Coastal region and finish out the week learning about the Plains Natives.  Ask your student what they learned about last week while discovering the Natives of the Eastern Woodlands.  Questions such as, “How did the Natives travel ?” (Foot or canoes) or “What were their homes called?” (Wigwams or Longhouses)  We will create class totem poles for the Northwest Coastal Natives along with learning new myths and legends that have been passed down through the generations.

And in Bridges Math we will focus on, “one more” and “one less.”  Students will be asked to look at a total number of objects and add one and subtract one.  This will be their first exposure to subtraction.  You can easily ask questions to further this learning outside of school.  Butterflies will be hiding in bushes and asking us, “How many” questions throughout this week.  I’m pretty sure the real butterflies of Vermont have found a much warmer climate by now such as the beaches of MexicoJ

Just a reminder:  

Our Butterfly Sharing will be this Thursday at 2:00.

Picture Re-take day will be on November 12

Thank you for all that you do!