Week 24

Welcome to week twenty-four! This week’s theme is: Chinese New Year!

Our book fair will be taking place on February 4-8 from 8:00 – 4:00 pm. Look for a flyer with more information about what books will be offered to come home soon.  It will remain open until 6:00 p.m. on the nights of parent teacher conferences. 

Parent teacher conferences are coming up on February 6^th-7^th.  From 3:30pm - 6:00pm.  Please sign up for a time to meet with your child’s teacher through your compass account.

Starting on Monday, February 8^th through Friday, March 8^th, our school will be having a Box Tops and Labels for Education contest.  Students will bring in Box Tops and Labels for Education to their teacher.  At the end of each week of the contest, the class who brought in the most Box Tops and Labels per capita will receive 15 minutes of free time or extra recess.  At the end of the 4 week contest period, the class who collected the most Box Tops and Labels For Education will earn a uniform free day.   Box Tops and Labels for Education allow us to earn money for our school to use on supplies.  You can find Box Tops and Labels for Education on various grocery products such as: Campbell’s Soup, Betty Crocker, Spaghetti O’s, Real Simple, Dannon, V8 and many others.

Here is a look at what we are learning this week:

Art: Students will continue working on their student directed art projects using mediums such as collage, pastels, paper construction, and water color. Both classes have earned a special clay day for cleaning up quickly.

ASL:  Signing time with Alex and Leah, food, cooking, and gardening fun.  If you want to send in any healthy snacks for thirty to learn to sign and eat, please feel free! We have a formative assessment this week on twelve food related ASL words: garden, grow, eat, breakfast, lunch, dinner, may I be excused, kitchen cup, plate, spoon, and fork.

Dance:  Students will continue studying the different types of movement.

Health: Hygiene. 

Math: Students will continue to learn addition strategies.

Music: Drum beats, recognition and names of notes on the staff- Children are learning FACE and Every Good Boy Does Fine mnemonics to help remember names of notes.

PE: Various games in the gym

Reading: Large Group Phonics: Final Blends –ft, -it, Small Group Phonics: Vowel Combinations: ow, Shared Reading: Amazing Animals “Officer Buckle and Gloria,” Guided Reading by leveled groups, Centers (SSR, iPods, Computers, Partner reading)

Science: Students will finish up their study of physical changes and begin studying electricity.

Social Studies: Students will study ancient Egypt. 

Spanish: Students will continue studying the words for bread=pan, milk=leche, juice=jugo, cookie=galleta, ice cream=helado.  

Writing:

• Writing: Hand writing with Mrs. P: This week will be learning the penmanship of cursive “g”

• Composition with Mrs. P: This week we will practice writing our opinions with three supporting reasons by having an apple taste test!

• Spelling with Mrs. S: Students are grouped by levels and engage in Words Their Way sorting activities.  Students sort words into categories by sounds patterns according to their present level of functioning.  We finished our MOY (middle of year) assessment. Those who were absent need to make this up while the others continue to work on their new sorts for the week.

• Sentence Fundamentals with Mrs. S:: Students will continue their study of PENSMARK, a self-regulating strategy developed to teach sentence fundamentals: capital letters, end marks, making sense, simple sentence formulas, and subject/ verb identification. PENSMARK is a mnemonic device that stands for Pick a formula, Explore words to fit the formula, Note the words, Search and Check, Mark out the imposters, Ask “Is there a verb?”, Root out the subject, and Key in on the beginning, middle, and end. Everyone has mastered the three requirements of a complete sentence: Capital letter, End mark, and “Makes sense.” We finished the prerequisite skills for identifying subject nouns and verbs:  Now we are applying those skills to identify the subjects and verbs in the sentences.  This is a prerequisite skill for the second grade benchmark skill: I can correctly use adjectives, adverbs and the past tense of irregular verbs.  Since subject-verb identification may be review for some, students will work at their own pace advancing to the next level as soon as they receive a score of 100 on three consecutive trials.  Some of the students are finished writing sentences using the SV formula for present tense verbs with four consecutive 100% in a row.  Update: The students who mastered the SV sentences with action verbs, identifying the subject and verb correctly in three consecutive trials will work in special learning centers on tenses of verbs, plurals, fact and opinion, conclusions, and contractions.   The others will continue to receive individual and group instruction toward mastery.  Hopefully next week we will all start linking verbs.