Good Evening
I hope you all had a great week. We have had a fantastic start to school and the class is already settling into a few routines. I hope this post informs you of the week gone by, gives you a heads up on some nuts bolts of the classroom, and gives you talking points to engage your child in conversation about their classroom.
This week we introduced some of our reading routines. During reading instruction, I will have 4 stations. One will be meeting with me for direct instruction, a station where kids read books to themselves, one will be vocabulary and phonetic instruction, and one will be reading fluency/other language arts activities. This week the students were introduced to the read to self routine and we practiced it and talked about what makes it both successful and educational. Next week we will introduce the same routine in Lexia. We also started math this week. We worked on partner games,setting up Zearn math, some number writing, and played some counting games. The students have also been working on their all about me books. It has been a great way to start some initial writing. These books will be shared at open house as well as be available for kids to take home. The thought being that kids took take other kids' books home and share about their classmates.
I wanted to give you an full picture of the first 45 minutes of the day. The doors open at 7:30 and if your child rides a bus, he/she gets to school by 7:40. If your child is dropped off, please have them to school by 7:40 too. When the students arrive, they return their homework bag and book, sign up for snack & lunch, and then eat snack. When they are finished they have until 7:55 to interact with their friends and choose from a variety of free choice activities. I want to give them a chance to socialize before we get into the academics each day. I think it is important to give them this social opportunity. At 7:55 we start our Morning Meeting. This is an important part of our day and offers strong social and academic opportunities. If you would like to learn more about Morning Meeting, click here. With all of this being said, it is important that your child is on school by 7:40 to access this first 45 minutes of the day. Thank you in advance for your support with this.
NOTES:
*Today your child brought home (in their homework bags) a sheet of paper that has all of their log in information for a variety of the tech tools we use throughout the day. There is no expectation that kids work on these things at home but rather have it as an option of they are looking for something to do.
*Yesterday your child brought home a few flyers from Scholastic. I will do book orders in September, November, and May. This book club is a great way to get good literature at a fairly cheap price. Here is the information: Dear Family, You can choose to have your books shipped to your home or delivered to me with our class order. With a $25 order, you can pick a FREE $5 Book (use code: READS). Class Order Due Date: 09/27/21 Shop Our Class Page: https://orders.scholastic.com/K3277 Shop Digital Flyers for Our Grade with Your Child: https://clubs.scholastic.com/grade2 Please share the Class Page link to extended family and friends. All orders also earn FREE Books for our class.
*Wednesday will be school picture day. We are scheduled to go at 8:00 and the class picture will be taken then. Please do your best to be at school that day.
*This week we have read a variety of read a loud books all focusing on the concept of "me." The books celebrated our individual qualities and how special each person is and can be. Some of the books we have read were I Like Myself by Karen Beaumont and Only One You by Linda Kranz,
That is all for now. I hope you all have a great long weekend and find some time to relax and enjoy your family.
Peace,
Tommy
