News From Our Classroom

     Hello.   I would like to thank all of the parents who contributed to our Halloween Party last Friday.  The table was full of good (and gross) treats--thank you.  I hope that you enjoyed the Halloween Parade through town, too!  The kids had a great time!  I'm hoping that they all had just as much fun "trick-or-treating" on Halloween, and that we succeeded in getting all parts of kids' costumes back to them before the event.
     This coming week is another shortened week, with NO SCHOOL tomorrow (Tuesday).  We have made it into a Teacher's Workshop Day because voting is still happening in the school, and many of you voiced a discomfort with children being here when there was going to be such an influx of unsupervised adults in the building.   The rest of the week will be as normal as I can make it. The children got their sight words and fluency sentences today, as well as their reading book for today.  Please practice these with the children today and tomorrow, and return the books to me Wednesday morning.
      In Reading, we have learned 9 words families so far this year, around two different short vowels (a, o).  Since there are at least ten words per word family, that means your child has had the opportunity to learn 90 + new words so far this year, just in word families alone!  We will be working with another new vowel this week--  short u -- and will learn three more word families (and 30 new words!)  My goal is to give your child a really strong foundation in short and long vowel sounds (and vowel teams) before the end of the year.  Even for kids who are already pretty good readers, these skills are important as they are exposed to multi-syllabic words.  Often, they can read smaller words without knowing HOW they do it, so when they come to longer words, they are missing the skills they need to "attack" them.  These skills are also very useful for spelling words that follow spelling rules, so learning them will also help your child develop as a writer.  Of course, there are MANY words in the English language that don't "follow the rules", and many of those words are your child's sight words during the first five or six years of school.  Keep the word cards I send home each week--these same words will become your child's spelling words over the next few years.
    In Math, we have been working on number equation families, and learning number combinations that add up to specific sums.  We have been adding new strategies to our "problem-solving tool kit".  In previous weeks, we added drawing out the problem to counting on and using manipulatives to build the example.   Last week, I introduced using a number line as our fourth strategy.  When using a number line, your child has been taught to "start at the biggest number" and to take the same number of "hops" either to the right (when adding) or to the left (when subtracting) as the second number in the equation.  We have been going over the fact that the order of the numbers on the same side of the "equals sign" does not matter (commutative property), but that the two totals on each side of the "equals sign" must be the same.  Finally, we have been using these four strategies to solve Halloween word problems.  The BloodHounds finished the test they have been working on to show me which first grade skills they have already acquired, and on which we still need to work.  I will be sharing the information I glean from this test when I meet with you in a few weeks at parent-teacher conferences.  This week, the BloodHounds will be working on "place value" for base-ten numbers.
         As you know, Mrs. Meader has challenged the kids to come up with a means of  protecting a raw egg in much the same way that our ribs protect our internal organs (the POINT behind these contraptions your child may have made during this last week of school).  Mr. Inman recorded these experiments, and  pulled together a VERY short video showcasing them.  You can have a look at this video by going to our unlisted YOUTUBE location at:  https://youtu.be/zP8Q-aWva48    to watch.

         The important dates for the next few weeks are:
11/3--Workshop Day/ Voting Day--Students have no school
11/4--Flu Shot Day (Elementary students who have signed up)
11/11--Veteran's Day--NO SCHOOL
11/12, 11/13, 11/16  Tooth Fairy Visits
11/16--Photo Retake Day
11/19 --Parent/Teacher Conferences 3:30 - 7
11/23 --Parent/Teacher Conferences 3:30 - 7
11/25- 11/29 --Thanksgiving Break
       That's all for this week.  I will be in touch next weekend.