9-15 May 2011
Welcome back! If you're a mom, and you're reading this before Sunday evening, Happy Mother's Day! Your kids love you so much and they were so excited to give from their heart in all they did. Hope you have a wonderful day!
Well, our school not only 'passed' our accreditation Standards, but we rated a top category on 2 of the standards. I want you to know that we did not do this on our own. Your children were a part of the process as well. The Advance Ed team met with the staff after school on Thursday to outbrief the results. It was so exciting and it was fulfilling to receive re-accreditation for the next five years.
This week's work will include:
Reading:
Story Selection
Title: Simple Machines
Author: Allan Fowler
Genre: Expository Non-fiction
Comprehension Skill: Main Idea
Comprehension Strategy: Summarize
Study Skill: Parts of a Book
Spelling/Phonics: -oi, -0y suffixes -er, -or
Language/Vocabulary: Homonyms
Grammar: Pronouns
Writing: Explanation
Spelling Words:
oil
soil
voice
point
boy
boil
coin
oink
toy
joy
against
heavy
We continue to work on addition and subtraction to/from 18. We've taken a few more timed fact drills and some are moving into success with beating the clock. We're also beginning to have each student read for their last individual oral/silent reading assessment called the DRA2. This test is given as an end-of-year/summative assessment for 1st grade. This shows how much growth they've accomplished and where they are in fluency, word recognition/problem solving, comprehension, including story retell w/sequencing events, identifying characters, setting, the problem and solution of the story, then I'll also do a reading interest survey on them. Please include these kinds of questions after they read their books in the evening. This test is the one used to measure grade level expectations for the end of year.
Keep them writing, also. We'll have one last writer's workshop, where they'll write from a prompt, and I'll use a scale (rubric) to score their sample to insert in their reading record. This scale will include expectations concerning writing conventions and composition for a first grader. These include: sentence composition, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, descriptors, beginning, middle and end and overall quality of written expression. We'll use a graphic organizer to write from and hopefully they'll be able to score a 3 or 4 on this last assignment.
With 27.5 days of school remaining, we've still got a lot to accomplish! No reason to postpone any longer.
Thanks for all your continued vigilance and help with homework.
Have a wonderful week!
Mrs. Petty
