I hope this update finds you well and enjoying a restful weekend after the first week of school. I greatly enjoyed getting to know your child last week and look forward to a great school year!
We have just begun our Daily 4 and CAFE adventure! This is the reading program implemented in my classroom. Daily 4 is the structure we will use to plan our morning. Children will be busy completing meaningful literacy tasks. The choices will be:
- Read to self
- Word Work
- Meet with Teacher
- Read to Someone
- C for Comprehension
- A for Accuracy
- F for Fluency
- E for Expanding Vocabulary
The children will learn reading strategies within each category. These strategies will become tools for the children to use to help themselves become better readers and writers. I will keep you informed when new strategies are introduced to the whole class through weekly newsletters and your child's individual strategies through Parent Pipelines. Both of these communications will give you clear directions as to how to reinforce these concepts when you read with your child at home.
We are beginning the first portion of your child’s homework this week (our other homework activities of spelling and math will be introduced gradually). I am asking your child to read for 80 minutes a week. When broken up between Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, the result is 20 minutes of reading a night. To receive the largest benefit for reading development, I am asking a child read to an adult for as much of the 80 minutes as possible for your family. Reading to an adult provides children support with reading comprehension, accuracy, fluency and expanding vocabulary as well as builds a family culture of literacy.
I’ve included in the weekly packet two strategies your child can incorporate into his/her nightly reading from the CAFÉ learning last week. These are called check for understanding and back up and reread. If you are interested in seeing these reading strategies in action, I’ve linked two videos below using the button below.
Please see the following information below for important dates and learning this week. Have a wonderful week!
Best Wishes,
Libby
Important Dates:
9/3/15: Parent Volunteer Meeting 3-3:30 pm
9/7/15: Labor Day-No School
9/11/15: Spaghetti Feed and Movie Night 6:30-9:30pm
9/16/15: Back to School Night 6:30-8:00pm (parents only)
This Week in Learning:
Reading: We will be practicing our CAFÉ strategies and building stamina with read to self and read to someone.
Math: We will be reviewing number bonds of ten and introducing our Math Daily 3 activities of math with someone, fact fluency, and math by myself. We will begin our first math unit of sums and differences to 20 next week.
Writing: We will be orally telling narrative stories.
Science/Social Studies: We will begin our first unit in our geology study of pebbles, sand and silt. Students will be exploring similarities and differences of 3 rocks.