Writer's Workshop
Students have been participating in Writer's Workshop twice a week. As their interest in writing continues to increase, they are now eager to write on their own topics. As they have not yet been receptive to encouragement to expand on their topics of interest, we have come to an understanding that their writing topic is predetermined by the teacher on Tuesday and Thursday will be their student choice writing day. Students are expected to use our core word poster to spell known words and for unknown words, they are cued to pronounce the word slowly and then write down all of the letters that they hear.
The core words that students are expected to use during Writer's Workshop include:
do in more what
go it open you
help like that
I make want
Additional words that we consistently use while writing and are expected to look at the chart to spell correctly.
mom friends the play
dad love my
Core Words
The core words that we focused on this month are: make, here, do, open.
Literacy Groups
Ms. Purcell's Literacy group has been focusing on reading comprehension. We have been working on reading two to three sentences and then responding to who, what and where questions.
Mrs. Abou's Literacy group have been continuing their work on word families. They have completed the -at Word Family and are finishing up the -an Word Family. Next week the boys will begin learning about the -ag Word Family.
During our whole group Literacy lessons, we have been reviewing our core words both in isolation and in sentences. The core words introduced during the month of January were: open, do, make and here. Word Families are also introduced during whole group Literacy lessons.
Example of core words (the highlighted words in red) presented in a sentence format.
Students have also been introduced to sight words. The sight words "said" and "see" will be introduced during the first week of February. I am hopeful that we will be able to introduce 1-2 new sight words a week.
MATHEMATICS
We are continuing to review and work on our addition skills. The students who are confident in their addition skills have been working on addition facts with sums to 10.
Daily/Weekly Review:
1. Practice counting to 100.
2. Number recognition fluency. Reading numbers quickly.
2. Practice counting by 10s.
3. Participate in missing number activities. For example, 18 ___ 20
4. We are all learning to sign numbers up to 29.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
After completing their Gymnastics unit, we participated in a week of Mission Impossible (obstacle course) and wall climbing. We will be participating in a variety of activities that will hopefully result in some of us learning how to skip.
SOCIAL SKILLS
1. Bathroom expectations including pulling one's pants up while standing in front of the urinal and toilet, not staring at the students using the urinals and what to do if one has an accident while in the bathroom.
2. Greetings. Different ways you can say hello to other people, for example, a handshake, smile, head nod, saying hi/hello.
