Happy New Year!

Hello,

I hope you had a nice winter break! I am glad to be back and to get back into routine. The kids were all happy to see each other and to share about their breaks this morning.

Spelling Words this Week:

• large
• change
• every
• night

Before break, the whole school focused on Cooperation.  We read a book about helping others and then we completed an activity in small groups.  Each small group got to pick their material and come up with something they would build together.  I encouraged them throughout the activity to make sure everyone had a role, everyone had a voice, and that everyone was respectful.  

This was a great activity and it wasn’t natural for every one.  I think it’s common among adults and children alike to either take a backseat role or a control-all role.  See the pictures showing the work of each team!

Researcher’s Workshop:

With this being our first week back, we are going to spend time reestablishing classroom rules and goals for the New Year.  

--Students will revisit their beginning of the year Hopes and Dreams.  They will then set some new goals for the remainder of the year.

--We will then revisit our classroom rules and decide if each rule is still working for our classroom or if we should make some changes. 

--Finally we will talk about how each rule (separately)and what it looks and sounds like.  This will create a clear visual of what it should look like for students to be successful as a learner and member of our classroom family.

Math

We are starting a new unit in math.  We will start the unit review money and then quickly heading into subtracting multi digit numbers.  In next week's newsletter I will send a copy of our classroom chart, we will be creating, showing the different strategies students are using to subtract multi digit numbers.

A great way to support your student with money is by taking out a handful of change and having them count it.  They are working with Quarters, Nickels, Dimes, and Pennies.  Students can practice writing the total with dollar/cent notation. 

Writing

In writing we will start our next unit called, Lessons from the Masters.  Students will be writing small moment stories.  They will spend a lot of time learning from other author’s (the masters). 

Reading

We are also going into a new reading unit.  In this unit we will: work on fluency, stop to notice and understand literary language, track events across longer books, and learn different strategies chapter book readers do when they are starting and stopping the same book.