Weekly News April 18-21

I hope you have all been enjoying this beautiful spring weather!  I know it meant lots of time for yard work and wagon rides over here!  I was reflecting over break about how little time I have left with the boys and girls and am excited to get back into the school groove and make the most of it!!

Important Dates and Reminders:

April 20: Social Studies and Subs Family Night
April 21: Wear Blue and Green for Earth Day
                Earth Day Clean up from 2:15-2:45
April 28: Funky Friday (dress as silly as you want)

A note from PSC:

Teacher Appreciation Week - May 1-5

Help thank our teachers for their hard work. Provide an item for lunch or snacks during Teacher Appreciation Week.  Click on this link to sign up.  Thank you for your support!

Here is a peek at our week:

Reading:  This week in reading we will be doing some important work of really thinking about the steps we take and places we check when solving an unknown word.  We will take a deeper look at the questions "Does it make sense?"  Does it sound right?" and "Does it look right?"  We will learn the clues we use to answer all of these questions and to even assess ourselves on which clues (picture, book/story topic or letter sounds) we use most often and which we need to rely on more.  We really want readers to be able to rely on these clues equally as they develop as readers so they have a balanced and effective approach to word solving.

Writing: This is the perfect week for us to wrap up our persuasive writing unit as Earth Day is almost here.  We will work to edit and publish a few pieces of our work on environmental issues and will be presenting them to our second grade buddies at the end of the week.  We will focus on speaking about the topics we wrote about in a persuasive way by standing tall, using a loud voice and using body gestures to really get to really get our listeners engaged.  Here is a link to a video we watched of a boy who is doing these things.  Although he is not speaking on the topics we are; the boys and girls were able to see how he used his voices and words to communicate well with others!

Math:  We are just beginning our LAST math unit of the year...holy cow!!  This unit is called Consolidation of Concepts and will focus on all of the important skills students need to attain in Kindergarten in order to have a solid grasp of mathematical concepts to build on in 1st grade.  All of these topics are repetitive and you might find me to a be a broken record when keeping you in the loop!  Please know that this is by design...our curriculum Math Expressions, is a spiral curriculum, meaning concepts are taught over and over across the year in various ways, taking students' development into consideration and giving them ample opportunity to master and deeply understand concepts! 

Science:  This week we will begin one of our most beloved science units called Balls and Ramps.  This week we will build some background knowledge and vocabulary about how and why balls move and bounce the way they do.

Word Work: Please continue to reinforce sight word automaticity in both reading and writing.  One way to practice writing is to say short sentences with multiple sight words in them and have your child write them.  When they finish have them check that their words are spelled correctly and fix up the ones that are not.  Also, challenge them to write them with all lower case letters.