Monday, November 30

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today! We did very typical "Monday activities" - journal writing, math, spelling, daily 5... however, we're starting to learn about some new topics so I'd like to go into them in more detail than I usually do.

In math, we are learning about 2-D shapes. Each day we will be working on a 'Shape of the Day' activity in which the students focus on a different 2-D shape. We will be using terminology like "sides" and "vertices" to describe the shape of the day, and then we will be looking for examples of where this shape is found in the real world. Today's shape was a square. We talked about how squares are a special kind of rectangle that has four equal length sides. 

Square Club. Be there and be Square.

Journal Writing was pretty standard today. The kids wrote about their weekends. I like doing the same writing task each Monday because it makes it especially easy to see the growth students have made since the start of the year - it's one of our only 'controlled variables' in a way. I am happy to report that there is indeed a lot of writing growth being made!

In the afternoon we practiced spelling together as a class, and as I predicted, this week's words were particularly difficult. Differentiating between vowel sounds is one of the more challenging parts of reading and spelling, especially for early readers. Please think of this week's Spelling as more of a learning opportunity than a test! My hope is that by the end of the week, students will have a much stronger understanding of the roles vowels play in simple words. I'm hoping that they start to have fun switching around vowels and seeing what words they can make. 

For example, when given the letters: B _ T, how many different words can you make by using different vowels? 

Tomorrow we are going to start building shelters for eggs! The kids are very excited to get started. 

If you have not sent back your purple family interview form, please do so sometime this week. If you do not know what form I'm talking about, let me know and I'd be happy to send another one home - I know at least one was left behind but I do not know who it belonged to.

Have a nice night!

Zac