Happy New Year! We're setting new goals in class and one of MY new goals is to keep my blog up to date every Friday as promised! So I'm "back at it" :)
We had a great first day back to school after our Christmas break. I was so excited to hear all about the kids' holidays and all about the activities they did with you, their families. We are not officially working on the 3D shapes unit as of yet this year, but I thought building 3D shapes with toothpicks and marshmallows would be a fun activity to begin school again. We discussed several 3D shapes and their names, faces and edges and we'll be super ready to tackle the bulk of this unit later in the Spring! Here are some pics of your kids in action!
We also had some fun with our Activity Buddies this morning! I have several language centres in the classroom and our buddies worked through each centre and taught us how to use the activity and get the best learning possible from the activity!
We're playing "Space Concentration" to practise sight words.....
We're linking cubes together to build words and practise beginning sounds and vowels sounds....
We're learning about rhyming words and word families.....
We're building words with foam cubes using blends and rhyming patterns......
AND we're playing "Sight Word Bingo" to strengthen our word banks for reading!
We've been using all of these skills this week to get back into the groove of writing. This weekend, I'll be marking your child's most recent "recount" to let you know at which level your child has been working during writing activities. We all chatted about this during our conferences and the new year is a great time to start introducing some rubrics and levels to your kids. We used our "Writer's Checklist" as we wrote our recounts and then we checked the checklist a second time to edit our work. Capitals, punctuation, correct spelling of Word Wall words and "best guess sounding out" have been the main points of focus for our writing. We're working very hard to use all of these important checklist items in our writing.
You'll see some writing come home next week with a levelled rubric and some praises for the things your child is doing great! You'll also see some suggestions for next steps. If your child is at a Level 3, he/she is in a great spot! Level 3 is a "B" level and is considered the standard for students. He/she is usually writing with the necessary components of our checklist, edits carefully and can do most tasks independently. Level 4s are "A"s and they mean that the student is working above and beyond grade level. This can be tricky to do but it's always a possibility. It's a bit different from when I was a kid and takes a bit of getting used to. "A"s mean your child is
exceeding expectations and is putting many "extras" into his/her work. I often give suggestions during lessons for how your child can work toward these Level 4s because we DO want them to feel as though Level 4 is achievable! We also build confidence though by talking about doing our very best and everyone's very best is different. In my eyes, we're all Level 4 for effort! But we don't have to get Level 4s in our learning. Your kids are working hard. There's nothing wrong with receiving a Level 2 and needing some extra help at times. It's how we learn and grow.
If your child is "at level", your child will receive mostly "B"s or Level 3s. If your child is at a Level 2, this is also a great spot to be!! Level 2 is a C level and means that your child is trying very hard and is meeting some of the expectations but might need a bit of a boost so far. It might be tricky for your child to work independently and that is o.k. Or maybe your child is working well independently but needs reminders of some of the concepts and a bit more repetition. With that repetition, concepts will come. Some kids need more time than others and that is a-ok. So have a look next week at your child's written work, his/her given level, and his/her suggestions and please don't hesitate to ask any questions that you may have. It's still early in the year and we have lots of room to use feedback, set goals and make some improvements if needed.
We're continuing our work with subtraction and are diving into solving word problems with subtraction next week. Thanks for all that you're doing at home! Stay tuned to our blog where you will find some of our newest Flat Stanley adventures! Dougie had a great adventure out west to see his Uncle Jody and Flat Stanley got to see and do some pretty cool things!! Check that out next week!
One of the fun art projects we did looked a lot like Claire's beautiful Christmas dresses!
