week of January 28, 2019

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones’ Newsletter (week of January 28, 2019)

Handwriting/Writing- Due to the weather last week and all of the time missed, we pushed back the completion of the Handwriting Book. Therefore, completed books will be coming home this week!!! Take a moment to look through the book to see how far our letter formation has come! We will be starting our “Building Writers” portion of the Handwriting without Tears curriculum and will be exploring Narrative Writing first.  We are still reviewing some of our lowercase letters for morning work and throughout our small group lessons.

Reading- We have a new story this week and it is: My Lucky Day and it is an animal fantasy story.  Our essential question is: What is a lucky adventure?  Our amazing words are: piglet, fox, lucky, filthy, cook, scrubber.  We will be discussing cause and effect with the story.  It is one of our favorites!  We can’t wait to share it with the class.  We are also working very hard on blending words and reading sentences and reading stories on our own.  We like to discuss the stories and talk about how the illustrations help us while reading the words.

Math- Since we have been practicing every day, we are so ready for the 100^th day of school!  There will be more information to follow, but we have been counting by 1s to 100 and 10s to 100 as well as counting how many days until the big day (practicing a little subtraction along the way).  We will be completing activities with time and measurement for the 100^th day of school as well.  When the Handwriting books come home, there are the number formations in there as well that can always be reviewed.

Science/Social Studies- Our Weekly Reader this week was about Germs and how to stay healthy.  It is a good time to review handwashing as well as keeping our hands away from our faces to try and keep ourselves in tip top shape. 

***Thank you so much for all of the contributions to our Boosterthon Fun Run.  The class was beyond excited to be able to run their laps as well as take in the dance party atmosphere of the Gym.  We hit a few of our classroom goals and we celebrated with: a SPARTY ticket for everyone, extra recess, and a movie.  Thanks so much for your support!

Important Dates:

Monday, January 28- Day 1

Tuesday, January 29- Report Cards sent home (this is later than the date scheduled due to internet outages) Please review the information and sign and return the envelope as soon as possible.

week of January 21, 2018

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones’ Newsletter (week of January 21, 2019)

Handwriting/Writing- Completed books will be coming home this week!!! Take a moment to look through the book to see how far our letter formation has come! We will be starting our “Building Writers” portion of the Handwriting without Tears curriculum and will be exploring Narrative Writing first.  We are thrilled to be able to dive so much into writing and look forward to fine tuning handwriting as we move along.

Reading- We are starting our fourth unit and the topic question is “Where will our adventures take us?”  We have a new story this week and it is, Rooster’s Off to See the World.  It is an animal fantasy story by one of our favorite authors, Eric Carle.  Our amazing words are: world, lonely, trip, horizon, journey, homesick.  We will also be sequencing the story as well as talking about the subject of the sentence.

Math- We have been working on more and fewer.  We have been working with objects as well as numbers on a number line with one more and one fewer and two more and two fewer.  We often practice in our small group with either pictures or objects before moving on to the number line and then writing to complete our work.  We also work with various Math activities in our centers and daily in our Math Meeting time. 

Science/Social Studies- We will be learning about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through books, a Weekly Reader, and Brain Pop Jr. video clip.  We will be talking about treating each other with kindness and this ties in nicely with our overall theme of being a good citizen and the teamwork component of our SPARTY way.

*Big Shout Out to all of our hardworking students and their supportive families!  We are so excited with the progress that everyone has shown since the beginning of the school year.  We have updated reports and testing samples to send home with report cards next week.  As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.  Thanks for all that you do!

*Thank you for contributing to Boosterthon and supporting our school!  The students are so excited each day to learn about the new character traits and see what exciting part of the adventure unfolds. 

Important Dates:

Monday, January 21- School is in session

Thursday, January 24- Boosterthon Fun Run

Friday, January 25- Report Cards Sent Home

week of January 14, 2018

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones’ Newsletter (Week of January 14, 2019)

Handwriting/Writing:  We will continue to work on things that make a good sentence.  These include:  starting the sentence with a capital letter, having a 2 finger space in between words, sounding out our words, making sure that the sentence makes sense, and ending with punctuation.  We have also gone over what makes a question and what a question mark looks like as well as an exclamation point and reading with excitement when we see it.

Reading: Our new story is: The Lion and the Mouse and it is a classic fable. We will be working on the main idea of the story.  Our amazing words are: jungle, beast, nibbling, snarled, trembling, entangled.  Our essential question for the story is: What causes us to change the way we feel?  We are so impressed with everyone working so hard on the letter identification of capitals and lowercase letters and making the corresponding sounds to the letters!  Keep up the great work!

Math: We have started the topic of: Comparing Numbers to 20.  We have been working on numbers 0-10 so far and counting objects and then making a set that has one more and counting objects and making a set that has one fewer.  We have also been writing the number for each set of objects.  We are so very impressed with the HUGE improvement in the benchmark for DIBELS Math.  Practicing number sense and number building skills has made such a difference and we are beyond thrilled with all of the hard work!!!! J

Reminders: Please continue to read each night and log the books in the January book log along with practicing the sight words.  Thanks for all of your cooperation and hard work, if there is anything else that we can help you with, please let us know. 

Important Dates:

Monday, January 14- Day 4

Friday, January 18- Spartan Dress Down Day ($1 donation)

week of January 7, 2019

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones’ Newsletter (Week of January 7, 2019)

Handwriting/Writing:  We will be making our way into our last unit, Writing Activities and we will be working on: syllables, sentences, labels, punctuation, questions and answers, words, paragraphs, vowels, rhymes, poems, and comparisons.  We will continue to review letter formations, correct pencil grip, starting our letters at the top, staying within the boundaries, and reminders to use lowercase letters when writing words.  When we finish with our Handwriting book, it will be sent home for review.

Reading: Our new story is: Then and Now and it is a nonfiction story. We will be working on the plot of the story.  Our amazing words are: gears, headphones, webcams, handwritten, phonographs, newspapers.  Our essential question for the story is: How are things we use today different from things we used long ago?  Each day, we practice our letters names, letter sounds, chopping out the sounds in a given word, and blending the sounds together to make words in our small groups and these are the skills that are needed to become readers!

Math: We have just introduced the topic of: Comparing Numbers to 20.  We are counting groups of objects and writing the correct number along with deciding which group has more and which group has fewer.  We will also continue with our Spring Math and working with partners on counting objects, finding or writing the correct number, seeing which group has more objects, and writing the missing number in a group of 3.

Reminders: Please continue to read each night and log the books in the January book log along with practicing the sight words.  Please continue to practice the practice packet that was sent over break to keep these skills fresh.  If we can get you any more information or resources, please let us know.

Important Dates:

Monday, January 7- Day 9