Reading Workshop

1. Turrill Elementary Lapeer Community Schools September 5, 2013 Room 127 Newsletter Mrs. Hribar’s First grade • Writing Workshop • Last week, we continued to work on our small moment stories. We learned that our first page of our small moment story should tell where the story takes place (setting) and the characters. The following pages should tell the actions that took place sequenced in order. This week, we are learning how to use punctuation in sentences. We also learning to keep the reader interested in our stories by closing in the story. • Ideas to increase your child’s writing at school • Have your child create a daily journal or help your child write a family menu for the week. • Classroom Information • Classroom- Please continue to remind your child of our classroom expectations: • Listen to the teacher • Follow directions the first time • Respect others, yourself, and our classroom • Raise your hand to speak • Be safe, be kind, be honest • Blue Folders- Please remind your child nightly that if he/she has any completed work, reading logs, or notes to turn in, to give them to me first thing in the morning. • Bus Tags- For students who ride the bus only, please have your child place his or her bus tag on their back pack. This tag must go home and be returned to school daily. We appreciate your continued support as we work to get your child home safely daily. • Birthday Treats- If you/ or your child is bringing in a birthday treat please do not so before 2:45 p.m. For the safety of all students birthday treats may be dropped off in the office. The office will deliver them to the classroom. If you would like to join us for the celebration, please pre-arrange that with Mrs. Hribar prior to the celebration. • Reading Workshop • We are continuing our work on developing good reading workshop habits by meeting at the carpet quietly and listening to the mini-lesson, as well as reading independently without getting distracted. • This week, we are continuing to talk about becoming stronger readers by using strategies (not just sound it out) when we get stuck on a word such as flipping the vowel sound, chunking the word into know pieces, using picture cues, skipping the word and reading on then going back to reread with their guess of the unknown word. Here are some things to say when helping your child decode unknown words – Does it sound right? Does it look right?, Would it make sense? • See attached Decoding chart • We talked about making our reading sound like a grown up reader and that when a part is exciting in the book our voice goes up and when the part is sad our voice is quiet/low. As a class, we have a stamina goal of 30 minutes and we are going to work on setting goals such as tracking the number books read to reach that stamina goal. • Nextweek, we will talk about noises and why they are a distraction during reading workshop as well as our chatting voice. • Please continue to practice the skills taught each week in writing and reading workshop at home. Remember the home-school connection is vital in helping your child become a successful writer and reader! Please take at least twenty minutes to read with your child every night. Your child must read everyday in order to become a competent and fluent reader. • Math • In math, we are continuing to work on counting and ways to count by looking at patterns in numbers ( such as in skip counting you see 2’s,4’s.6’s. and 8’s in the counting pattern). Through this unit, we are practicing skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s. • Problem Solvers- You may have seen some problem solvers coming home. These are done as a group in the class. On the back of the problem solver, you may see random numbers these are our mental math problems. • Ideas to help at home: • Give your child a bag of M&M’s and have them write number sentences based on the colors in the bag.

2. Word Study We continued to build cvc (consonant vowel consonant) words with short a and i, like bat and pig. We learned that fat vowels like a,o, and u always go with letter c when c is at the beginning of the word. Skinny vowels such as i go with k when k is the beginning sound. There are some exceptions to this rule such as kangaroo. We also learned at when you hear {k} sound at the end of a word that is followed by a short vowel, those words end with the –ck ending. Just Right Books Many parents have been asking about just right books. Here is a great paid website to get paper books for your child at his/her just right level. This website is similar to raz-kids. www.readinga-z.com Scholastic Book Orders Our first book order is due Sept 7th. You can find a link to order online on our classroom website. Every time you place an order or an online order, our class earns money towards purchasing new materials for the classroom. Books make great gifts for birthdays, Christmas, and Valentines. This is also another great place to purchase appropriate leveled books for child’s independent reading. Science This is an exciting time in our room. We recently had some monarch caterpillars come to our room. Over the labor day, they ate, ate, ate, and ate. They are beginning to form a chrysalis. If get an opportunity stop in and take a look.