Reading:  This week in reading we read Tacky the Penguin and enjoyed some non-fiction books about penguins, too.  Our Shared Reading poem was about penguins and we learned about using punctuation at the end of sentences.  We continue to read using our reading mats.  We read our books from easy to hard and then back to easy again. 

Writing: We are still working on our How To writing unit.  We read our writing to our partners to make sure they could follow the steps.  We will set writing goals this week.

Word Work:  We learned that rhymes are not just fun...they help you read and write!  We turned a magic word: "at" into a bunch of new words by adding a beginning.  Practice rhyming at home whenever you can.  Practice saying rhymes and writing rhymes!  A little trick students learned is that usually if a word sounds like another word, it looks like that word!  It can help us learn many new words!

Math:  We are working on addition and subtraction fact families.  We call them number bonds.  We are also practicing reading and writing teen numbers.  We can't wait for our 100th day of school!  We will celebrate the 100th day of school on the Friday of conference week.  It will be a low key celebration this year but sure to be a lot of fun! 

Science:  We are learning about Materials and Motion.  This week we started learning about how different materials have different properties.  Students are exploring which materials will be best for building a bridge for some of our plastic figures.  Here are a few pictures of the students exploring different materials. 

Parent Teacher Conferences

It's that time again!  Just this week the district announced a decision to make Thursday, January 31 afternoon and evening designated conference times.   Unfortunately, I made plans for that Thursday evening way back in July and I cannot change them.  I will be offering conferences Thursday afternoon and WEDNESDAY night.   I know this is an inconvenience for families with siblings at Irving.  Thank you for understanding.  As always- I am available to discuss any concerns or celebrations you have with a little warning.  Here is a link to the sign up.  Note that Thursday conferences are listed before Wednesday conferences.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B054DA5AB28A57-conferences

Donors Choose
HOORAY!!!  In November I decided to try writing a Donors Choose Grant to purchase more book sets for my early readers.  I am so pleased to say that an angel donor funded the whole project!  I was able to purchase 6 sets of 6 books for our class!  I found out on New Years Eve!  What a great way to end 2018 and begin 2019!  In order to thank her properly I will be taking pictures of the kids reading the books and will send her a digital thank you note. The students will also be writing to her. I may be contacting some of you for permission to share these pictures since Donors Choose may use them in promotional materials.

The 100th day of School is coming up on February 1rst.  I can hardly believe it!  We will be celebrating the number 100 on that day. That's the Friday half day of conference week.  More information on that to follow.

Next week I will have a sub on Thursday while I read with each of the students in the class.  This is such a fun day for me as I learn all about what strategies your child is using when reading and what strategies we will focus on in the days to come.

Reading:
We are back in the swing of things!  We are learning that some books are easy for us and some are hard for us.  We learned how to sort our books so we can "warm up" with the easy books and work our way to the hardest books in our pile!  Her is Rachel explaining how she sorted one of her books.

Word Study:

This week we got back into the routine of learning snap words and learned how to play two games with them.  BANG! is a way we practice our snap words in reading and writing.    We also practiced leaving spaces in between our words when writing sentences.  

Writing:

We began a HOW TO unit in writing.  Please look out for homework that will help with our How To writing.  Here is Eli's first 2 pages on How to Eat Ice Cream. 

Math:  

We are working on Number bonds in math during math bins and whole group math.  We are also gearing up for the 100th day of school.  We practice counting to 100 every day and counting sets of objects.  

Thanks to Ms. Noonan for inviting the author, Komal Singh to Irving.  We enjoyed meeting her and having her read her book to us about girls in engineering.