24-30 January 2011
NO SCHOOL FRIDAY: 28 January 2011 Teacher Work Day: Report CARDS
Welcome to the last week of the quarter and 1st semester. I always marvel at how much the students learn in the first half of the year. The second half, of course, is the one where they'll get closer to that transition to 2nd grade. We been involved with a lot of assessments and will complete them in time to include results in this grading period and suggest how your student's performance can increase over time until the end of the year.
Here are the Language Arts skills of the week. I am now including information about 'TARGET SKILLS' from the Reading Street program. These skills are essential to showing mastery over the comprehension skills necessary to read with skill and show their understanding for more difficult text. We'll begin using graphic organizers to assist with this in the future, so continue to have your student read their Fluency Folder. We will also begin taking measures of their fluency efforts. This consists of reading a NEW passage and scoring how many words were read a minute. The goal begins at 30 words per minute (wpm), and by the end of the year, the 'target' is 60-70 wpm. A few parents have practiced with their child and had great success at home. Way to go!!
Here are the skills for the week.
Story Title: Jan's New Home (our new student Jaylyn can relate to this!)
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Comprehension Skill: Theme (What lesson are we to learn from the story?) TARGET SKILL
Comprehension Strategy: Monitor & Fix-Up (is your child stopping when things don't sound right, look right, make sense, or doesn't match the print?)
Study Skill: Maps
Spelling/Phonics: Ending plural -es, /or/, spelled ore TARGET SKILL
TESTED SKILL
Language/Vocabulary: Adjectives
Grammar: Verbs That Do Not Add -s (ex: pack, fill, & load) TESTED SKILL
Writing: List
Please remember to use the homework links. Those students who participate consistently, are performing much better than those who do not use them often. These are there to support learning in the classroom, and give students' extra practice for mastery and fluency of math, writing, and reading skills. A report of participation on RAZ kids reading and IXL Math will be included in the 2nd quarter progress report.
Once again, thanks for a great 1st semester. We'll head into the last half and continue learning, changing, and growing!
