Thanksgiving Lunch 2013 - November 15th

Newsletter for the Week of November 18 - 22, 2013

Newsletter for the Week of November 18 - 22_ 2013 -

Unit 3, Week 2 - Storm Is Coming! / Snow

     This week our Focus Stories will help us to answer the question: What do animals do when the weather changes? Both stories fall under the genre of Fantasy.  Our first story this week will be Storm is Coming! written by Heather Tekavec and illustrated by Margaret Spengler.  When the old farmer warns that a storm is coming, the dog spreads the word and leads all of the animals to shelter.  Huddled together, they wait anxiously for the storm to come.  But who is this frightening creature named Storm, and what will happen when he arrives? 
      Our second Focus Story this week will be Snow by Manya Stojic.  Moose, Bear, Fox, and Hare frolic in a snowy, glowy Winter Wonderland. Winter is coming to the North Woods and the animals are all getting ready for the first big snow.
     Our Target Skills this week will be blending phonemes, identifying final sounds, reading with expression, classifying and categorizing, identifying verbs in a sentence, forming conclusions, and understanding characters.  We will also be working to identify the letter 'Nn' and its corresponding phoneme--/n/.  

Letter: Nn

High-Frequency Words: with, my (Please continue to practice all of our High-Frequency words at home!)

Oral Vocabulary (Storm is Coming!): guard, huddle, nodded, pasture, silent, and stampede

Select Vocabulary (Snow): drifted, gathering, swirled, wisely


Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images and summary information.

Former Student Returns as Guest Reader

Thank you for coming to read to us Miss Olivia! 

Newsletter for the Week of November 11 - 15, 2013

Newsletter for the Week of November 11 - 15_ 2013 -

Unit 3, Week 1 - Every Season / Jump Into January: A Journey Around the Year

     This week our Focus Stories will help us to answer the question: How does the weather change in different months and seasons?  Both of our stories this week will fall into the genre of Informational Text.  We will begin with Every Season, written by Anne Love Woodhull and Shelley Rotner.  The narrator of this story will take us on a cyclical journey through all four seasons, describing in great detail what makes each season unique.
     Next we will read Jump into January: A Journey Around the Year by Stella Blackstone and illustrated by Maria Carluccio.  This book is full of picture puzzles for us to solve as it takes us month-by-month through the year.
    We will focus on the following Target Skills this week: blending phonemes, pausing for punctuation, figurative language, subject of a sentence, comparing and contrasting, and questioning.  We will also review Aa, and is corresponding "short" vowel sound.

Letter: Aa

High-Frequency Words: come, me  (Please continue to practice all of our High-Frequency words at home!)

Oral Vocabulary (Every Season): bloom, peck, scatter, speckled, store, tracks

Select Vocabulary (Jump into January): glistens, jive, local, orchard



Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images and summary information!

Making Butter / Pancakes in Pajamas for Pp Week

Newsletter for the Week of November 4 - 8, 2013

Newsletter for the Week of November 4 - 8_ 2013 -

Pajama Day for Pp Week

Duck Dynasty Day (Red Ribbon Week)

Nerd Day (Red Ribbon Week)

Unit 2, Lesson 5 - David's Drawings / Mouse Shapes

     This week our Focus Stories will help us to answer the question: What can we create with shapes?  Both of our stories are fictional this week.  First up we have David's Drawings--story and pictures by Cathryn Falwell.  This text is Realistic Fiction. "In this gentle and appealing story, a boy figures out how to stay true to his own artistic vision while allowing his friends to express their own creativity." (School Library Journal)  
     Our second story this week will be Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh.  Three mice show us how they can make and do many different things (They even find a way to trick a sneaky cat!) with a variety of shapes.  
     Our Target Skills this week include: blending phonemes, reading with expression, classifying/categorizing shape words, adjectives for size and shape, story structure, understanding characters, and summarizing.  We will also review the letters and sounds that we have studied thus far (m, s, short a, t, c, and p), as well as their corresponding phonemes--/m/, /s/, /a/, /t/, /k/, and /p/.  


Letters: Mm, Ss, Aa, Tt, Cc, Pp

High-Frequency Words: Review see, a, we, to

Oral Vocabulary (David's Drawings): add, fluffy, fresh, grinned, moment, shyly

Selection Vocabulary (Mouse Shapes): hurry, pounced, sneaky, tricky


Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images!