week of November 11, 2019

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones’ Newsletter (week of November 11, 2019)

Handwriting:  We are starting our “diver letters” (p, r, n, m, h, b).  These letters all start with the same pattern: they dive down, swim up, and swim over!  We avoid b and d confusion by separating the letters and teaching them in different groups based on formation habits.  We are almost through the lowercase letters and we will then move back to the capital letters to finish them up and any remaining numbers before working on words and sentences.

Math:  We have been working on reading, writing, and representing whole numbers up to 20 with and without objects and pictures.  We are working with numbers 11-20 to gain a foundation for place value.  We are continuing to work on Missing Numbers in Spring Math and each week our score is increasing towards our goal of 16.  We are also working on counting to 100 and number identification.

Reading:  We have been working on characters and setting in our stories along with details that make a text fiction or nonfiction.  We have been working on beginning and ending sounds in our daily Phonemic Awareness activities.  We have been changing words by either adding a part of a word or taking a part of a word off (say “dirty” without “e” and the answer would be “dirt”).  We have been working on all letters and their sounds as well as long vowel sounds.

Science/Social Studies:  We have been working on a story called “The Size of the Problem” that identified what is a small problem, a medium sized problem, or a big problem.  When something comes up in our classroom we have been trying to identify what size problem it is along with how to solve it best to work on our teamwork and our problem solving.  We have been reading several Thanksgiving stories and most of them are about turkeys trying to get out of being the main dish!

Important Dates:

Monday, November 11- No school for students, Veterans’ Day

Tuesday, November 12- Day 6 (please return signed report card envelopes as soon as possible)

Friday, November 15- Spartan Dress Down Day ($1 donation) and the end of the Penny Wars