September 21-25

I hope everyone had an easy fast! This week the students continued reading our Journeys story How Animals Communicate. They have are learning about making inferences and predictions. The students really love this story because there are so many animal lovers in this group! They love sharing their ideas about how different animals use their senses to communicate. Many students were able to make connections to the story by saying things like “My dog presses his paws down too when he wants to play” or “I hear birds call to each other every time I go on a walk with my family”. The class was able to learn that animals communicate with us and each other without using words but instead using their senses. Some of us practiced communicating without words and were surprised at how successful we could be!

This week our vocabulary strategy was working on dictionary skills. We talked about entry words and guide words. The students also practiced sorting words in ABC order. This skill can be tough and we will continue to work on this throughout the year.

Our spelling words this week were focused on short i and digraphs sh, ch, th.

The class will practice taking their first Journeys test on Friday. I will be going over the answers with them next week and discussing the test taking strategies that can help us when we get “stuck”.