We survived the first week of school! 7/12/13

These are 3 of the books we read this week.  After reading I Am America, we began writing our own I am poems.  (These will be displayed at open house) We read The Summer my Father was Ten and When I was Young in the Mountains.  We used the last two books to practice some of our reading comprehension strategies.  We follow the CAFE model in our classroom.  (Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, Expand vocabulary)

This is our CAFE menu.  We will be adding to this board throughout the year.  This week we practiced several comprehension strategies: check for understanding, back up and reread, connect to the story, make predictions, and make inferences.  Ask your child about these strategies-they have chosen one of these to practice as they read independently.  We are also working on building our stamina and are up to reading 15 minutes at a time. 

Next week we will be learning some more CAFE strategies and adding to our menu/bulletin board, making goals, choosing good fit books, and celebrating our reading.

In math this week we focused on place value and rounding.  On day two, I think I made some heads hurt with a different way of thinking about numbers.  I am trying to give the class a better, deeper understanding of number sense.  Rather than always saying 241, I may say 2 hundreds, 4 tens, and 1 one.  Or we may say 24 tens and 1 one.  By starting the year off this way, I hope that the class will have a deeper understanding of place value that will help them when we begin multiplying and dividing with larger numbers.

We spent most of our time this week going over rules, routines, and expectations.  Next week we will be starting science (earth materials) and will be setting up our seed journals (writing).

Please bear with me as this is the first year I have started blogging for our classroom.  I think sharing newsletters and classroom information will be easier and more informative this way.  I plan on updating the blog each Friday with the events of the week.  Plus this way I can add some pictures so things make a little more sense if you aren't in the classroom.  I am starting to learn how all my smart devices work.

Have a great weekend!!!

Mrs. Simmons