We had a wonderful "first week" back! The children all did so well with their mask-wearing, hand sanitizing, making new friends, and working hard! I have a couple of recommendations/reminders after the first week:
- Because we are often bringing things home (school lunches, work packets, and corrected work) I think a small backpack might be handy. We will leave backpacks outside on the picnic table, but I think it would be nice for transporting water bottles, extra masks, and anything I am sending home.
- This week, when we arrive at school, I am going to have students get their morning tubs (these are activities for strengthening fine motor skills) right away. The closer your children arrive to the 8:15/12:15 start times, the more time they will have with their morning tub. We have some exciting tubs for March, which I previewed on Friday, so children will hopefully be anxious to get to school on time!
- I realized that for the "Sight Word Mat" (M, Tu. Th, F asynchronous work), children need a list of the sight words. I will be sending that list home with them on Monday, but the sight words can also be found on the "High Frequency Words" tab on my website. Remember that the mats we sent home on Monday the 22nd need to be kept in a safe spot, as those will be the options for asynchronous work (along with reading) on M, Tu, Th, F. We may even continue to use those in April and beyond, so please keep track of those. They offer great ideas for fun ways to extend students' classroom learning in all subject areas. There is no need to return any work from M, Tu, Th, F-- the only work that needs to be turned back is Wednesday's asynchronous work packet.
- This Tuesday, your children will bring home a work packet for their Wednesday asynchronous work. We will not be using pages from the last materials pick-up-- these are all new pages. Following the 8:30 Zoom, these are the pages they will work on, and then bring back to class, on Thursday the 4th.
Raz-Kids Assignment
This past Wednesday, about 7 students did not complete their assignment in Raz-Kids. There are three things students must do to complete the assignment: listen to the story, read the story themselves, then take the quiz. I really would like the students to be taking their Raz-Kids quizzes, because these are a great way to build reading comprehension. Please check your child's Raz-Kids account and see whether there is a "My Assignment" spaceship on the homescreen. If there is, that means their assignment hasn't been completed. For a full tutorial on how to get into Raz-Kids and find your child's assignment, please review this tutorial I sent back in September.
This Week in Class
Phonics Focus: "sh" digraph
Sight Words: little & love
Math: Subtraction & Measurement
Theme: Welcoming March
Center Time
This week, I will begin launching academic centers. Usually, I ease into these and introduce one center area per week. However, due to our late start back into the classroom, I am going to try to launch all centers this week. There will be a math center, a writing center, a reading center (we will be using "actual" books in the classroom vs. Raz-Kids), a craft center, and a literacy game center. The children will get to all the centers in each rotation over 2 days (meaning that they will meet with me for reading once on M or Tu, then once again on Th or F, they will do one craft M/Tu, and another craft on Th/F, etc.) During this time, our classroom aide (who you may have heard about from your child) Mr. Tim, will be in the room assisting with these centers. I am very excited to launch these hands-on learning centers!
Special Project
On Wednesday the 17th, St. Patrick's Day, the students' asynchronous work will be to design and make a leprechaun trap. There are many, many ideas for leprechaun traps on the internet if you need any inspiration. I just wanted to give you a heads-up about this assignment because you will need to start collecting small boxes, toilet paper rolls, green paper, etc. Children will take a photo of their traps or (even better) record a video of themselves explaining how the trap works on the 17th, and send photos/videos to me in SeeSaw so that I can see all their great engineering!
Upcoming Events
Friday, 3/5: Report cards go home (completed and sent by your 2nd trimester teacher)
Wednesday, 3/17: Special asynchronous work project: Leprechaun traps (start saving boxes and materials for these)
April 5-9: Spring Break
