We jumped right in first thing Monday morning and got to work!
LANGUAGE ARTS NEWS
New Words Their Way sorts were worked on this past week in addition to our 5 Word Wall Words. On Friday, students had their first dictation test using the 5 word wall words (WWW). The sentences read aloud are simple and often use past WWW to encourage review and accurate spelling. I will be watching for students to start each sentence with a capital letter, spell all WWW correctly. Students have access to their portable word walls during this activity, if required. I would prefer them to check their word wall and spell the words correctly rather than reinforcing incorrect spelling. After marking the first tests and discussing the results with Mrs Rothfos, I've decided to make each sentence worth 4 marks from now on.
The marks will be awarded as follows:
1- this week's www spelled correctly
1- review www spelled correctly
1- capital letter at the beginning of the sentence
1- punctuation at the end of the sentence
Tests will come home with your child on Fridays. Please sign them and return them to school on Monday. If your child has spelled the www incorrectly, I ask that they write it out 5 times on the bottom of the test paper for extra practice.
This week in writing we are going to start our JoAnne Moore sentence structure unit where we are going to focus our attention on using specific verbs and varied sentence starters. I have always had great success with this program and am looking forward to watching the students continue to develop as writers.
Last week during read alouds we focused on comprehension strategies. We focused on making several different connections with the text to encourage stronger comprehension (text to text, text to self and text to world). We also discussed strategies that make stories come alive in our minds.
MATH
In math we have turned our focus to addition. I have broken the students into two groups. One group is working on mastering specific strategies to encourage mastery of the basic facts (doubles, doubles +1, partners of 10, adding 1,2 or 3 to a number, adding 10, adding 9 and touch math) while the other group is working on solving more complex single digit mental math questions (adding 4 single digit numbers, solving equations, etc). Over the next week we will be tackling double and triple digit addition! Watch for another blog describing the strategies that we will be using in the next week!
ART
Warm and cool colours is the theme for January's art projects. We are exploring how these two groups of colours interact with each other within a piece of art and how they make us feel.
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