Important Dates & Reminders

*I will try to highlight new dates and information with red text.

September 4, 2013 - School Pictures at 8:45 

September 6, 2013 - Walking Field Trip to Thompson Park. Chaperons should arrive promptly for a brief virtual field trip at 9:00am. This slide show will show your role in helping our young botanists. We should return well before 11:00am. Please accept my thanks in advance to the many generous volunteers. Your contribution to this field trip (and future quarterly/seasonal trips to Thompson Park) will make this service learning project a true success.

September 11, 2013 - Early Dismissal for professional development at 1:15pm

October 8, 2013 - Ohio Reading Achievement Assessment (Please avoid scheduling appointments and absences on this date)

October 25, 2013 - End of the first quarter

October 28, 2013 - No school, teacher grading day

October 31, 2013 - Halloween party (extended lunch from 12pm till 1:30pm, most students go home to change into costumes). Please note it is district policy that no costume may include any weapons or facsimiles.

Please take a moment to visit Flyer Connection. This website will be a clearing house for non-school district flyers, including after school activities and team sports. I have made a link on the right under "Favorites" for your future reference. http://www.uaschools.org/pages/Upper_Arlington_City_SD/Community/Flyer_Connection

Fall conferences will be here before we know it. If you were unable to sign up for fall conferences during last week's Parent Information Night, please send me an email and I will let you know the remaining slots. I included a link to the slide show we presented during Parent Information Night in this week's blog post email.

 

Unfortunately, an old back injury flared up last week and I expect I will spend a few more days on the floor. I will leave detailed substitute plans and will be checking in daily until I return. I absolutely LOVE teaching and HATE being out of the classroom. My team will be keeping a close tab on our progress and ensuring that, despite my absence, we will have productive and rigorous days as well as continuing our high standards for concentration and effort. Please feel free to contact me via email if you need anything.

 



What We Learned This Week

Word Study
Students continued to study syllables, syllable types, and vowel sounds. We continued with the understanding that a syllable represents a single vowel sound (often made up of more than one vowel, aka "vowel teams") and that we break words into syllables.

This is helpful when decoding (reading unfamiliar words) and encoding (spelling words we are not secure in). I've introduced open (end in a vowel and make the long vowel sound, "vowel says its name") and closed (end in a consonant and makes the short vowel sound) syllables.

We've studied short a, e, and i sounds. This may seem very primary, but many students have not internalized this understanding. It is easy take this knowledge for granted, but explicitly studying it will pay dividends and reveal missing knowledge that will drive instruction.

Next week we will be introducing our first set of spelling generalizations. We will be focusing on short and long a vowel sounds. We will also be looking at syllable type (open, closed, vowel-consonant-e). The following words share our short and long a vowel sounds: drag (closed), cage (open), snap (closed), place (CVE), rack (closed), wax (closed), stab (closed), brake (VCE), mask (closed), space (CVE), save (CVE), change (VCCE).

As I shared at Parent Information Night, the words I send home will be representative of the generalizations we study each week. However, students will be tested on new words sharing the same generalization. In support of the Common Core, rather than relying on memorization, students will have to show they can apply what we've learned.



Reading
I concluded my first round of individual reading conferences last week with the goal of supporting student selection of "Just Right Books." We also increased our morning reading to a full 45 minutes, very impressive this early in the year. We will eventually add fifteen more minutes to read for a full 60 minutes daily. Sustained reading and Just Right Books have been shown to be two of the most meaningful reading practices a developing reader can engage in. The emphasis will be on being "real readers," readers who truly engage in their reading.

Venn Diagram by Jessica Hagy

 

Students began using Venn diagrams to compare and contrast subjects in a short passage. This requires many skills: comprehension, care in using spelling from text, underlining, looking for information. Comparing and contrasting has been identified as one of the single best ways to deepen understanding of reading. It is a skill we will continue to develop in reading, but will also use across math, science and social studies as the year progresses.

 

I've received a lot of helpful and consistent feedback regarding reading homework. As anticipated, most students are able to complete the literal front portion of the non-fiction reading quickly and accurately. We will develop our answers (using the question in the answer, answering with complete sentences, including details, avoiding pronouns, etc.) as the year progresses. However, the immediate focus is on developing comprehension with the three questions on the back.
- List three things you learned. Students who struggle with this or say, "I didn't learn anything," should record three important parts of the text.
- List three questions. Students who find this difficult should reread sentence by sentence to see if they can come up with a question for each sentence or minimally, one question per paragraph in the passage. We have worked on this and it has been modeled explicitly. However, it will continue to be a developing skill. Please continue to support your child's thinking here as it will eventually become an automatic process. If your student is really balking at this step, offer to record their questions for them. You may be amazed at how many great questions they have if they don't have to write them down. You can transition them into writing their questions by having them write one, then two, and finally three as you hand over this responsibility.
- List why you think the event was important. Help your student by relating the events in the passage to their life.

Our first read aloud is Crispin: The Cross of Lead, by Avi. Ask your student to relate what is happening in the book. Most seem to really enjoy this one. It is probably the most challenging for readers as our lives are most different from Crispin's due to the time span. We will begin to look at how Crispin's life is different than ours: shelter, clothing, food, entertainment, etc. next week.

 

Writing
We worked on editing complete sentences and learning the most common editing symbols. We also looked for sentence subjects and predicates.

Math

Students continued to review numeracy. We practiced: standard and expanded notation, making numbers, comparing numbers, naming large numbers, naming place and value, and telling time by reading an analog clock. You may want to try this with your student at home. Give them four numerals (e.g., 5, 6, 3, 2). Ask them to show the largest number they can make using only these four numerals ( 6, 532). Most can do this quickly. However, ask them to show the next largest number (6,523) and most will struggle. You can do this with the smallest value as well. If they struggle, you can have them write the numbers on index cards and move them. This helps a great deal.

Science
I introduced rocks and soil, our earth science unit. Essential learnings are: rocks are constantly forming from other rocks through different processes (erosion, heat, pressure - the rock cycle); erosion is the primary process by which rocks are formed in Ohio; rocks are made of minerals (many of which we consume when we eat fruits and vegetables); and rocks have many important uses.

 

Our garden has some initial sprouts. I will try to get these watered in my absence so we don't have to start over.