Would you like a way to help your child practice his or her addition facts that's relatively painless and inexpensive? This past week I taught your child a game that's called Memory and then a number--like Memory 5. All you need is a deck of regular playing cards! To play Memory 5, take the 6 through face cards out of the deck and put them to one side, since you will only be using the aces, 2s-5s. Mix the cards up and place them face down on a flat surface in an array that's 5 cards X 4 cards. Now you are ready to play. Play takes place in "turns". Player 1 turns over two cards leaving them face up in their original spots and says the cards out loud like "two and four do NOT make 5. They make 6. " Then he or she turns the cards back face down and it is Player 2's turn. Player 2 turns over two cards and says "1 and 4 more DO make 5" and keeps those cards. Then it is Player 1's turn again. Play continues in this fashion. If a player turns over a 5, he says "5 and 0 more make 5" and he keeps the 5. But if he first turns over another card (like a 3) and then turns over the 5, he may NOT keep either card since "3 and 5 more make 8". The key to this helping your child learn his or her addition facts is the talking that accompanies the play, so DON'T skip (or let him/her skip) that part. The game takes about 10 minutes, and the kids love it. What a way to practice those facts AND have fun!!! Memory 6 uses aces, and 2s - 6s. Memory 7 uses aces and 2s - 7s, etc. You can play Memory up to 10. One of the learning goals for each child in First Grade is to know his or her addition facts to 10. Another goal is that first graders will know all number combinations that make 10, as that is a cornerstone for much mathematical learning. So, we will do many things that practice both of these skills, but I wanted to share with you something YOU could do that would be fun, inexpensive, and have a tremendous impact on your child's learning.
As you know, I have been sending home sight words since the beginning of the school year, and your child has done pretty well to learn these words during the week. You should have been receiving certificates each Friday letting you know how well your child has done learning his or her 10 words for the week, as well as which word(s) he or she did not know. Recently, though, I have begun to send home a sheet each Monday that has six sentences on the front, and six sentences on the back. These sentences are ones I hope you will practice EACH NIGHT with your child for the four days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings). Yes, I want you to practicethe same twelve sentences each night, but want you to change the order in which they are read. These are called fluency sentences because their purpose is to help your child step beyond the decoding of individual words and begin to work on thinking about and reading familiar material with expression.
"Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression. Fluency is
important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. . .
Because fluent readers do not have to concentrate on decoding the words, they can focus
their attention on what the text means."--ReadingKnowledge.com
Fluency, like any other skill, needs to be practiced. With young children, practicing takes the form of sentences, rather than paragraphs or whole books. So, on the first day that your child reads these sentences, it will not be surprising that the presentation is a bit choppy--we call it 'reading like a robot'. But on each subsequent day, the reading of these now familiar sentences should flow more and contain good expression. The idea is that the child should become so familiar with the text that by Friday, he or she should sound like they are more talking the text than reading it. This would also happen if your child MEMORIZES the words. To help prevent pure memorization of the material, change the order in which your child reads the sentences to you. I can assure you that on Friday, I WILL be changing the order. By Friday, the text should flow as your child reads it. I also encourage your child to first read the sentence I am pointing to "in his brain" to himself, and then out loud to me. To let you know how your child is doing with fluency, you will notice that I have put a spot on those certificates where it says "I can read _____/12 of my sentences fluently." Last Friday, about half the class were not able to read their sentences fluently. This worries me because the new DRAs we received a few year ago have a fluency piece added to them from Level 14 (toward the end of the first grade material)on. Fluency becomes a factor in whether or not your child passes their reading tests. He or she must pass the accuracy rating, the fluency/ time requirement, AND the comprehension /retelling section to actually PASS the reading test at that level. That first year the tests changed, before I started giving these fluency practice papers, many students did not pass beyond a Level 14 because they were not able to read the material quickly enough and STILL be able to comprehend/ retell it. Doing these sentences each week seems to provide enough needed practice to make it possible for the children to pass those tests. Please help me to help your child by practicing these sentences with him or her nightly. Thanks.
We finished our fire safety program last Friday, and completed materials should be coming home this week. We have moved on to mapping skills in Social Studies, and will also begin the first system of the human body this week--the Skeletal system! Halloween seemed like a good time to start this unit! In Social Studies, your child is supposed to learn the cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west), and be exposed to the intermediate cardinal directions (northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest). He or she should be able to label a compass rose with these direction words, and use them when locating items on a pre-made map. He or she is also supposed to be able to name and locate the seven different continents of the world (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America) on a world map, and should be able to verbally label the 5 oceans (Arctic, Atlantic, India, Pacific, and Southern), too. We will be working on these skills from now until Christmas Break. For the Human Body study, we will cover the Skeletal, Muscular, Circulatory, Digestive, Respiratory, and Nervous Systems. (As first graders, we do NOT study the Reproductive System.) We are supposed to learn the name of the system, and the major parts of that system, as well as the purpose of that system within the human body. We study the 5 senses (which we have already done when we were doing our apple unit), as they deliver information to the nerves and brain as part of our nervous system. At the end of the unit (sometime in January), we will do a week of review where we try to take the information we have learned from each system, and try to recall to which system it belongs. As I said above, we will start this week and next by putting together a paper skeleton I have for each kid to assemble. We will be learning the common terms (skull, backbone, rib cage, hip bone, upper leg bone, lower leg bones, upper arm bone, lower arm bones, bones of the hand, bones of the feet, the kneecap) while being exposed to the scientific/medical terms for these same parts (cranium, spine, ribs, pelvis, femur, tibia, fibula, humerus, ulna, radius, phalanges, and patella). We have a little booklet that we will be building that will contain this information. First Grade "ain't what it used to be", is it?!
That's all for this week. Remember, we are collecting Halloween treats to hand out to trick-or-treaters NEXT Tuesday night from 6-7 pm. The CPS Halloween Parade will take place at 1:15 from school, down Chapman Street, up Main Street, through NorthEast Bank, and back up Spring Street. As of today, I have had one parent contact me to let me know she was sending in chips to our Halloween party next Tuesday at 12:15. A volunteer has brought in silverware, napkins and plates.
Let me know if you are able to help contribute to our party. I'll be in touch next week, so have a wonderful week.
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