IXL Homework

Please have your child log in to IXL EVERY Wednesday night (or more!) to complete a minimum of 15 minutes math practice.
The following is a list of important skills to practice AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. Please have your child choose one (or more) of them.
Current skills we are working to master: 

• A.3 Counting tens and ones - up to 20
• A.7 Counting tens and ones - up to 99
• A.8 Skip-counting - with pictures
• A.9 Counting by twos, fives, and tens - up to 100
• A.10 Counting forward and backward
• A.12 Hundred chart  
• A.15 Skip-counting patterns - with tables 
• A.16 Sequences - count up and down by 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 
• A.17 Ordinal numbers  
• A.18 Writing numbers in words

*Next year, the children will be expected to complete homework nightly and while I understand that weeknights can be hectic... it is an important habit and attitude to develop in your child now.

New Readers Workshop Unit

Unit 7: Fluency Fluency by stephtoney on GoAnimate

Animated Presentations - Powered by GoAnimate.

Book Fair

We will be visiting the book fair on Thursday, March 21st.

2013- 2014 Calendar

Next Year's Calendar

Conferences and Half Days

Report cards will come home on Tuesday. The comments section will look a little differently this term. I have tried to focus on identifying accomplishments/ strengths and goals for the remainder of the year. I found that by altering the format I was able to fit more specific information in that small space!

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are conferences. Please return confirmation slips ASAP!

Conference days are half days. There will be no lunch served so please plan accordingly. Children may bring in a larger snack than usual, especially if they will not reach their destination and have lunch until later.

Conference Schedule (by student number for confidentiality)

Homework for the REMAINDER OF THE YEAR

To simplify the process and to make the homework more routine, please be aware that as long as there is school the homework will be:

Daily- 
1) read 15 minutes and log on monthly chart
2) practice word wall words (aka sight words) for weekly spelling and overall recognition by sight... if they can spell them, they can read them!
3) practice math facts, even for just a minute or two

Monday- 15-20 minutes reading (not listening) on RAZkids (counts towards daily reading assignment), minimum of 2 comprehension quizzes

Wednesday- 15 minutes on IXL- specific assignment details will continue to be emailed

ALSO, CHILDREN AND PARENTS ARE HIGHLY ENCOURAGED TO HONE THEIR DIGITAL LITERACY SKILLS FROM HOME BY ADDING POSTS AND/ OR COMMENTS (APPROPRIATE AND SCHOOL OR ACADEMIA RELATED) TO THE KIDBLOG FROM HOME.

Words for March 11-15

end, other, father, brother, friend

Practice

Helping Your Child Be A Reader

from: http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/reading-comprehension-and-decoding-strategies

Instead of simply telling him to “sound it out,” try these tricks:

• Say nothing. Give him a chance to figure it out.
• Say, “Look at the picture.”
• Say, “Let’s get the first sound.” 
• Say, “What would make sense?” Even if he gets the wrong word, you can say “Yes, it’s a kind of house, but the author chose a different word. Look at the first letter and see if you can get it now.” 
• Say, “Chunk it.” Are there smaller words in the bigger ones (e.g., ‘going’ has the word ‘go’ in it)?
• Say, “Let’s reread.” Before you tell your child the word, see if he can re-read the sentence and get it with a “running start.”
• Say, “Close your eyes. Now look again.” Have him close his eyes, open them, and see if his brain can just “get” the word as a sight word, without trying to sound it out.
• Say, “Say it like a word.” Decoding will only take you so far. If you know how to make the sounds come together like a word you know, it makes reading so much easier. It’s not about saying the sounds faster; it’s about saying them like a word. Country can be sounded out as “cow-n-try” or “count” “try.” But if they “say it like a word,” they are more likely to get to country. You can use a slinky to help them literally “see” what it looks like when they say stretched out sounds. Have them collapse the slinky as they “say it like a word.”
• Skip the word and come back when they have the context of the sentence (be sure they do). 
• Look at word families. If your child knows ‘at’, they will more easily be able to identify ‘hat.’ 
• Get the main word first, then add on prefixes or suffixes. You can use your finger to cover up parts of the word while your child gets the main word. 
• Tell them the word. You do not want to hinder the comprehension of a story by belaboring a single word. Instead, give your child the word and have her re-read the sentence so that the word sticks in her mind for the next time she encounters it!

To facilitate comprehension/thinking strategies, have your child:

• Ask a question about what he has already read (to themselves, or to you).
• Infer what is going on or might happen, based on what they already know and what they have read. 
• Make a connection:
  • Make a text-to-text connection where he relates this book to another he has read.
  • Make a text-to-world connection where he relates the book to an experience going on in our world (e.g., truffula trees being chopped down and our own struggles with deforestation).
  • Make a text-to-self connection where he relates the book to himseld or an experience he has had (e.g., remembering a time he was not listened to, even when he knew better than the other person).
• Visualize: Encourage your child to create a mental image or play the scene like a movie in her head
• Evaluate: Determine the importance of characters, events, or details. 
• Synthesize information means taking information you learn along the way and combining it with the information you know. 
• Other tips:
  • Make a prediction.
  • Take the character’s perspective or relate to the character’s feeling.
  • Read it like a sentence. If your child reads haltingly, have them re-read the same sentence to get the fluency (and confidence!) aspect of reading. It’s hard to comprehend disjointed sentences.