On Friday, your child's first Progress Report came home in their folder, as well as their scored Unit Reading Test. As I mentioned earlier, this first test was a review of skills taught in kindergarten and most of our students did very well.
This week, we begin our second reading unit. Your child will be bringing home their hardcover reader twice weekly, usually on Mondays and Wednesdays, to read the day's phonics story or main selection to you. On most Tuesdays, they will have a mini take-home phonics reader that needs to be read and possibly have some words circled or underlined. Your child will write specific directions on the cover of these mini readers, and they should be sent back to school the next day.
Along with our new reading unit, each week there will be 10 spelling words to be mastered. We will work on these words all week, and the kids will be tested on Fridays. I'll list these words early in the week on this blog.
This week's spelling words are: at, ran, cat, an, sat, man, will, no, dad, mom
High frequency (word wall) words are: come, down, away, no, will
I have hung up a special Scholastic Books poster in our classroom. We are participating in Scholastic's Classroom Care program. When we read 100 books, Scholastic Books will donate books to schools in need. When your child reads a book at home, you can jot a note with the book title, send it to school, and your child will color in a book on our class poster.
We are working on addition and subtraction sentences in Math. Some of the students are already gaining mastery of many addition facts without using their fingers to count and that is great! This week we will make bead counters that will be used as needed to help with addition and subtraction in a concrete way. As your child comes to grips with their basic facts, their bead counter will actually slow them down and they will no longer need to use it -- that's what I hope to see happen quickly! We are playing math games in school as well - I hope that your child shares them with you at home.
Please keep your eye on the school website for possible school schedule changes due to the decline in Monsignor Cardiff's health.
Reminders:
If you haven't already, please send completed permission forms and $ for Mother Goose Field Trip by October 2.
A few students are still without their 2 stretchy fabric bookcovers needed for their hardcover textbooks. If you can't find jumbo size in the store, I still have a few for $1.
Scholastic Book Orders, if interested, should be returned by October 5th.