Week of March 21st

HAPPY SPRING!

Week Review:  Welcome back!  I hope you had a wonderful spring break.  This week we will be writing sentences about the stories we read and making connections between our book and ourselves. 
Level E will be writing a sentence about our story that includes a word that has two vowels that come together in the middles of a word.  Some examples may be: ow, ou, ea, etc.   Level F will continue to work with word families & spelling patterns to help with unknown words. We will include some examples in our sentence writing. Level G will discuss how good readers think about examples of how a book is similar to something in their life.  During our reading, we will stop and verbalize the connections we have with our story.  Level H will also discuss "text-to-self" connections, but they will be given some sample questions to help guide their connections.  This will help focus their attention on important connections rather than "surface/simple" connections.  An example of a "surface" connection would be, "The character is a girl and I'm a girl."  A deeper conneciton would be, "The character, Sarah, felt embarassed when she showed up to school wearing crazy socks when it wasn't crazy sock day.  I also forgot the date of a special day.  This year, I forgot to wear red when EVERYONE else in my class remembered.  I felt so embarassed!"  Level I and above will also work on making connections between the text and themselves.  They will be responsible for reading the text and when they come across a connection, they will individually fill out a sticky note with the connection they have.  Once the group has finished their reading, we will share our connections to the story.   

Book/Author Suggestion:  Song and Dance Man* by Karen Ackerman.  I chose this story in honor of our Kindergartener's Grandparent's Day this week.  In this affectionate story, three children follow their grandfather up to the attic, where he pulls out his old bowler hat, gold-tipped cane, and his tap shoes. Grandpa once danced on the vaudeville stage, and as he glides across the floor, the children can see what it was like to be a song and dance man. A wonderful tale of the special bond that a child and their grandparent can share.

 *indicates that it can be found in the Sappington Library.

Parent Tip:  This week there may be some parent/teacher conferences.  This is a wondeful time to get things clarified and place you and the teacher(s) on the same page.  It is wonderful to see how a child benefits when we all work together!

MAP testing will be held March 28th-April 8th.  I will be a facilitator during this time.  My time with first grade readers will be limited.

Finally, as we enter into the last quarter of their 1st grade year, I want to remind you to continue mastering sightwords (if they haven't already) and read, read, READ to your child.