This week we spent a lot of time perfecting our writer's workshop stories and publishing them. The students have been working very hard on their final copies. They are making a table of contents, a glossary in alphabetical order, illustrations with diagrams and labels, and designing their cover. About half the class has completed their books and the other half will finish next week. This has been a great project that has taught the students all of the steps in the writer's workshop process. I look forward to continuing to create books with them while exploring other types of writing. In math we have started working on our place value unit. We are using comparison symbols and learning tens and ones. We will continue working on place value and problem solving next week. We also introduced IXL to all of the students, which they are very excited about! You should have gotten a letter explaining the website and giving you your child's username and password. If you do not have the sheet, I put a sticker with their username and password on their take home folder. Feel free to let them use this program at home. During literacy I focused on fluency with small groups this week and started introducing them to an app called Quickvoice. They can record themselves and listen back to see how fluent they sound and what they need to work on. We are also continuing to practice visualizing while listening to James and the Giant Peach. And word study groups seem to be going well. You should be seeing their words coming home on the first day of the week and they have a check-in at the end of the week. We are also continuing to practice sight words using poetry each week.
Here are some things to ask your child about:
-What was a part of James and the Giant Peach you were able to visualize?
-What skills are you practicing when using IXL?
-What step are you on in the writing process during writer's workshop?
Reminders:
-Thank you to everyone who came to the Room 27 and Room 28 volunteer training sessions. I look forward to having all of you helping out in the classroom. If there is anyone else that would like to volunteer, please contact me!
-If you haven't turned in your Read Across America reading log, please get them back in before the end of the month. If you need a new one, let me know and I will send home another.
-Feel free to have your children use scootpad.com or IXL.com at home. I am able to log in and see all of their work.