December 11-15

Please remember to send warm winter gear to school with your child each day! If you would like any of the gear to stay at school rather then travel back and forth, please send me a note or an email!

Here is the link to the December newsletter.

Upcoming Events:
December 12: No School
December 13: Holiday wear
December 15: Orchestra performance

December 21: Pajama Day
December 22-January 2: No School 

Reading: As I have been meeting with readers this past week, I am amazed at how they are able to figure out their patterns and solve unknown words--they really are turning into readers! As their books become less patterned, they will need to amp up some of their strategies! Readers will learn to go back to fix up their reading if it doesn't make sense. They can search the entire picture to figure out tricky words and rely on snap words--even when they have endings! We call these snap words in disguise! Search through the books your child brings home for snap words in disguise. For example, seeing, looked,.

Writing: Writers will work on elaboration this week. Whenever we are writing true stories, we can add more details by showing in pictures and writing in words. Writers think about what more to add by asking the following questions:

• Who was there?
• Where is the story taking place?
• What happened?
• What did people say? (speech bubbles)
• How were they feeling?

Math: We begin Unit 3 this week, which focuses on identifying 10 groups in teen numbers, finding partners of a number (i.e. partners of 5 are 3+2 and 4+1), and addition and subtraction. When working on teen numbers, we want students to understand that a teen number is made up of a group of ten and extras. These are fun teen number puzzles to work on identifying the digit and quantity it represents. You could also work with teen numbers with toys at the house using this as a guide.
Here is an easy way to practice working on partners of a number.


Social Studies: We have been using close reading to learn and think deeply about our holidays unit. So far, we have read books about Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Cinco de Mayo, and Memorial Day. This week, we will learn about Earth Day, Christmas, the 4th of July, and St. Patrick's Day. When we close read, we talk about vocabulary and discuss what the author is trying to teach us. We have learned so much about these holidays already!