Happy Fall!

Reading

We began our first reading unit in our Journey’s literacy curriculum this week. Like last year, the students will be assessed on their comprehension of one story from our Journey’s book each week, as well as the grammar and vocabulary skills that are taught throughout the week. Our first lesson focuses on putting story events in order. The students read Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant and sequenced the story events in a flow chart. Henry and Mudge is a classic series of early chapter books, so if your child enjoyed it they can read other books from this series! Next week, the students will learn how to identifying subjects and predicates in sentences. They will sort fall themed subjects and predicates in sentences like, “The Autumn leaves fell from the tree.” The Autumn leaves are the subject and fell from the tree, is the predicate. It is important that the students understand that every sentence must contain a subject (the noun or “who” or “what” in a sentence) and a predicate (the verb or action in a sentence.) This week’s vocabulary words came from the Henry and Mudge story. Our vocabulary words are: Curly, straight, floppy, drooled, weighed, stood, collars, and row. Due to the holidays, we will have our first Journey’s test the week of October 5th.

Here are the students discussing whether they are reading a subject or a predicate before making complete sentences

   Writing

This week we learned about the importance of picking writing topics that we can fill with details. The students picked a plant, fruit, or vegetable to write about. They were challenged to describe their topic using as much detail as possible. I read some fabulous paragraphs about roses, kiwis, grapes, cucumbers, and bananas!

Spelling

Our words this week contained the short “e” and long “e” sounds. We noticed that all of the long “e” words were spelled with “ee” or “ea”, like each and freeze. Next week, we will study words that contain the short “i” sound like lift and the long “i” sound like pride.

Math

We have begun unit 2 on addition and subtraction strategies. This week we began working on writing addition stories, for example: Mrs. Felter has 10 girls and 7 boys in her class. How many students does she have altogether? The number model for this question would look like: 10 + 7 =17. When answering addition story questions it is important that the students include the unit they are working with, so their answer should say “Mrs. Felter has 17 students” (the students are the unit being added.) We will be studying doubles addition facts next week (like 9+9 and 4+4) as well as addition facts that are close to doubles (like 9+8 and 4+5.) We will also learn about the +9 rule which has the students use what they know about adding numbers to 10 when they add numbers to 9, for example if 10 + 7 is 17, then I know that 9 + 7 is only one less!

Have a wonderful weekend and I will see everyone next Wednesday!