Update, 9/27

Hello Parents of Great and Growing Kids,

First the business:

-Join the PTA if you have not done so yet. It is great and so are you!

-PTA Harvestfest is on Wednesday. I may be at the veterinarian’s office for my little old dachshund, but you should be at Harvestfest!

-Mark October 30th in the early morning for our Halloween Parade followed by a class presentation of the play, “The Ugly Pumpkin”

-Library books are due on Monday

-Thank you Mrs. Linehan for taking on the Room-Parent role. It is much appreciated!

     This last week featured our first foray into several weekly routines or new learning models. Students were able to attend our first PTA funded music class, where we will be learning about theory and using some fun instruments. Flex Fridays allowed students to play chess in one rotation, learn classic playground games in another, while I lead the classes through some great singing and music time. Ask your child to sing along with the music I sent in the recent email for a little fun at home. You might even hear these songs at Wnterfest. We also began using our “Math Journals” to explore problem solving and number sense on a regular basis. In the Math Journal, students select from a menu of word problems and are tasked with solving using both a concrete representation and a numeric algorithm. This duality of performance expectation helps reinforce concepts while informing me of potential opportunities of filling of “gaps” in understanding as students move from concrete to abstract (algorithms). The Math Journal also allows me to offer more personalized work to individuals as I adjust and re-adjust to approach learning a bit differently for the given situation. Finally, our class visited our Innovation Center to work on an engineering project that required good collaboration, problem-solving, and understanding of the design, test, redesign process. Ask your young engineers about how they and their team “Saved Fred the Worm”. 

      Have we talked about reading fluency at all? No? Well let me tell you a little bit about it. As early readers transition into more self-extending, independent readers they begin to establish a backlog of thousands upon thousands of words that have been read in their young lives. These words become more quickly decoded through practice until they literally automatically decoded. This occurs not only with individual words, but with phrases and sentences, allowing readers to see larger chunks of language in one visual gulp and leading to much smoother, more expressive reading. Eventually, readers become truly fluent. That is, they are able to read at an appropriate pace for the tone of the story or text while using expression and prosody as a way of expressing meaning in the text. In the classroom and at home we can work on fluency specifically by rereading familiar texts, reading aloud texts that require expressivity, using plays and short reader’s theater performances, echoing fluent reading in chorus or individually ,and actively self-timing/recording our reading. On a daily basis our students read familiar books that are just at their instructional decoding level for a chunk of time with the goal being added fluency. Children also use a Poetry Journal to repeatedly read poetry- which by its nature requires awareness of pacing- to each other. Already in this young school year students have been steadily improving their fluency. Help keep their progress strong by making sure there is a daily dose of reading time in your household.

Thank you once again for sending me your kiddos each day!

Best,

 Andrew Smith

Teacher, Del Mar Heights School

This Week’s Highlights

September 28-October 2

Harvest Fest on Wednesday the 30th

Phonics and word study focus

-Onset letter clusters, verbs

Reading focus

Comprehension focus: Author Study, Chris Van Allsburg, connections and readers’ questions

Book club individualized strategy lessons: Lessons created for specific skill outcomes based on individual and group needs

Focus books: Van Allsburg

Writing focus

Conventions- Spacing, Feeling ending of sentences, Periods and Capitals,

Writing skill- Showing/Telling, Narrative structure and the writing process

Topical writing- Narrative, “My Version of The Three Pigs” and/or “My Magic Touch”

Math focus

Full Math workshop (mystery number, number decomposition, word problem, independent practice, personal challenge and three math routines)

Math journal problem solving through visual models

Individualized challenges

Computation- Fluency with groupings and arrays, place value

Social Studies focus

Geography and map skills

Science focus

Mrs. Minarik’s Science Lab

Homework

Daily reading and homework packet