Weekly Update Jan 22

Hello Families!! I hope you had a relaxing and warm weekend. The children have been doing outstanding in class. Everyday they make me smile. Thank you for sharing their joy with me.


Class Wish List
We are still in need of exercise balls to use for flexible seating 
Watercolors
Important Events:
1/24                ECE/Kindergarten Round Up (8am)
1/24                Dine Out (Papa Murphy’s)
2/26                Passion Projects
2/26                Birthday Celebrations
2/26                Google Virtual Reality presentation (Google is coming here!!)
1/26                January Birthdays
2/1                  Dart Mania Fundraiser
2/6            Field Trip to Arvada Center to see Seussical
2/5-2/7       Mrs. Brady in Chicago with other Southmoor staff for a learning trip 
2/7                  Internet Safety Presentation
2/14            Valentine’s Day Party- more information to come


A few goals we have been working REALLY hard on are:​
Math writing: We are working to explain our thinking. This is a school wide goal and we have been working very hard to explicitly explain why and how we solved a math problem. Another huge part of this is naming our strategy. What did we do to solve the problem? Did we use up and down addition, sticker notation? Please help me encourage the children to grow their thinking and analyzing brain!


Writing About Math:

1. Restate the question
2. Write your answer using math language
3. Name your strategy and use CUBES to solve
4. Explain each step
5. Use your rubric
6. Ask for peer feedback

CUBES Strategy

C circle numbers and labels
U Underline the question
B Box important math words
E eliminate words you do not need
S solve and show your work


In Superkids: 

-Decode Pattern Words with long a spelled -ey, ay, ange, and eigh
-Use context clues: STRATEGY: if we come to a word we do not understand, skip the word and read to the end of the sentence and see if the rest of the sentence helps you understand that word. 
-Understand and use adjectives and adverbs
-Understand and form contractions with “will”
Ask your child: to write a short story using adjectives and adverbs. Can you name the adjectives and adverbs? 


In guided reading:
We will begin a new Book Club. We will start reading the book, Breakout at the Bug Lab. 
Objectives we will focus on this week are: 
-Understand idioms and abbreviations
-Understand similes
-Determine important ideas
-Understand characters
Ask your child: Name the character traits of the main character in the book. -Identify what an idiom is. 


In Writing:
We will continue to work on our personal stories. We are working very hard to get our writing ready for third grade. We are including many details in our writing and expanding our thoughts. For example, if we are writing a story about the first time we went skiing, we can include the sequence of events and details that makes us feel an emotion. We want to make our writing exciting for someone else to read. We have been also giving each other lots of peer feedback about how we can always improve our craft.
Objectives we will focus on this week are:
-Sequence events or steps
EXPRESSIVE WRITING
Dictate and write narrative texts
-Use the writing process to draft a personal story
AUTHOR'S CRAFT
-Use descriptive language, including vivid imagery
LISTENING AND SPEAKING
-Ask and answer questions
-Describe personal experience
In math:
We will analyze and evaluate data using bar graphs and line plots. 
Ask your child to think of a “survey question” (What is your favorite pet? dogs, cats, fish, hamsters) Then have your child ask friends and family their surgery question. Finally, have your child create a bar graph to represent their data.