January 5-9

Happy New Year! Everyone was so excited to get back to school and share about what they did over Winter Break. Many kids went out of town and others went to camps. It sounded like a busy two weeks.

This week we dove right back into learning. Our spelling pattern focused on words ending with -ch and -tch. Students also learned about the possessive ‘s. We did a lot of activities that focused on this and the students really surprised me with how well they picked it up and understood the difference between a plural -s and a possessive. In grammar we revisited homophones again and in their centers they played a homophone matching game.

Our weekly story was a folktale called How Leopard Got His Spots. We spent a lot of time talking about the sequence of events and retelling the story in sequential order using order words such as first, next, then and last. We worked as a group to retell he story in our own words and then illustrate our own pictures. I am seeing such growth in the fluency and decoding skills of everyone in the class. They learn from each other and enjoy reading aloud. They are understanding what it means to read with expression and many of the students are beginning to do this on their own. If you notice them doing this during their nightly reading, please encourage it! If your child is not reading aloud that often that is also something I am encouraging. Reading in your head and reading aloud are two very different skills and since they are tested on reading aloud, it is great practice for them.

In math we are exploring money and measurement. We have introduced area and students have practiced using different units of measure to find the area of a flat surface. They also used a pan balance to compare different items’ weights.

Have a great weekend. Shabbat Shalom and GO PANTHERS!!!!!