#CardinalPride

 

There were lots of activities going on this week, and our class represented well. We had great attendance at the Carnival and McTeacher Night. Our attendance was so great that we won the Happy Meal Party and came in 2nd in attendance for the Carnival! This says a lot about the support of the parents in our room. I am so grateful for how all of you support school fundraisers like the Book Fair, Carnival, and McTeacher Night. I am even more thankful for how you support your child and their learning. Our class was awarded the 1st grade attendance award because of the parents of the children in Room 102. Without your hard work and emphasis on school being important, our class would not have celebrated with a popcorn party today. I greatly appreciate each of the parents in our room for making their child's learning a priority. In addition to having a popcorn party, the students that missed 1 1/2 days or less for the month of September got to put a target on Mr. Kenney's door to represent that they met their individual attendance goal for the month. The kids were excited and were adamant about meeting their attendance goal for October. I have loved seeing how the kids are learning the importance of responsibility at a young age and are seeing the value and reward in showing up each day, doing their best, and learning.  All this is evident in the improvement and growth they are making in the classroom. We took our STAR Math and STAR Reading tests this week and I was so proud of each child's hard work and growth. I look forward to conferencing with parents next week about their child's progress and giving them feedback on their child's performance. 

Graphing our STAR scores in our Data Binders.

In reading, I introduced silent e. We focused more specifically on long a and long o. At the beginning of the week we practiced phonemic awareness skills through a long and short vowel (a/o) picture sort. We also brainstormed together a list of long a and long o words that had silent e. The next day we worked in partners to complete a word sort of long and short vowel (a/o) words. Today, we ended our phonics focus with a long a and long o "spelling assessment" by making a Sneaky e puppet. I verbally gave the students words and they had to write only the words on their puppet that were long vowel (a/o) words. This activity was used as a formative assessment to see if the kids were hearing the long vowel sounds and to see if they were applying the silent e strategy when they make words. The kids all did great, and I look forward to seeing how they use the silent e rule in their reading and writing.

We also read some fall stories this week and brainstormed various Fall vocabulary words. Our focus was on finding descriptive words that make stories more interesting. We found adjectives in our read aloud, and then applied using adjectives in our writing by creating a poem about Fall using our senses. We also made our own pumpkin out of construction paper and wrote about its size, shape, color, and texture using descriptive words we had brainstormed. The kids also described how their pumpkin looked using words like funny, scary, mad, and happy. 

 

In math, we spent this week learning different strategies to help us solve subtraction problems. We talked about drawing a picture, using our fingers, using a number bond, and using a number line to help us accurately subtract. On Wednesday and Friday this week we took addition timed tests. Last week we did 3 minutes per test, but this week I backed it down to 2:30 (we won't go any less than that).  I am very pleased with how the kids are progressing, some are so close to passing and others are ready to be challenged with addition tests to 20. Next week will continue subtraction and will spend more time doing small group instruction (STACK) to help better differentiate learning.