Tomorrow is Pencil Day for our school's WE Day fundraiser. See newsletter for information.
Below is a copy of the note I sent home today. February 27, 2017 Dear Families, Attached is the Grade One list of sight words with your child’s progress marked on it. Throughout the year I have been highlighting the words students have been able to correctly spell. As you can see, we have been moving along quite nicely, this is very exciting!!! At the top of the chart there is a circled number, I have told students that once they are able to correctly spell that number of words, we will do a fun class activity together, the catch is that every student has to reach their number goal. There is not a time limit on this (though hopefully within the next 2-3 weeks!), I will just be sporadically checking the words with students as I have time to do so throughout the school day. I am sending this home to you as a FYI and in case your child wants to practice their own tricky words at home. The words that will be on Friday’s quiz are there, when and new, we have covered the rest of the sight words on our weekly quizzes (and if we have not, most students already know how to spell them, therefore a week’s review does not seem necessary, for example the last two on the list, hit and sit). Next week, we will begin working on the next 100 words of the primary high frequency word list for our weekly quizzes. Our pattern words this week are pl, sl, bl and fl blends. As I mentioned with other quizzes, I will mainly be looking for students to correctly spell these blends and not necessarily the entire word, unless we have covered that particular spelling pattern. With these weekly quizzes, I have really been trying to instill confidence in the kids that they have great skills! I know some of the words I give are tough to sound out but one of my goals in Grade One is to give the kids confidence to feel comfortable trying to spell words and using all of the tools they can to do so. Some of the main strategies are: (1) chunking words into parts they know, (2) using other words they know to help them spell it, this is another instance where knowing our sight words really helps and (3) deciding if it looks right. (1) This is really sounding a word out slowly, for example, sp-ee-ch, we know sp sp sp, eeeeee, ch. Often we repeat the words a few times and count the sounds on our fingers. (2) I ask what little word do you hear/see inside ___? For example, shout, chin. I find longer words often seem overwhelming for the kids so I try and show them how to make it easier for themselves. I have attached some work students did today to practice this strategy. (3) This strategy is a bit dicey I know but I only use it when there is no other way of knowing how a word is spelled. For example c/k words are tricky or words with ir/ur etc. I ask them to think if they have ever seen the word anywhere else, for example in a book, on tv, on the board etc. Thank you so much for practicing the sight and spelling words with your child every week, this work certainly shows in class, their skills have increased greatly in reading and writing. As well, knowing these sight words has given them so much more confidence in their Language Arts skills that they then can apply to other areas of the Grade One curriculum. Ms Brcic
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We had a fun 100 day today! Students have brought home a booklet of papers with the activities we did to celebrate the day. Thank you for sending 100 of something with your children, it was fun to see what everyone came up with!
As you know tomorrow is Library Day, please have your child bring back their library books. We have spelling quiz tomorrow, students practiced their words again today and seem like they will be ready for it. Students have brought home a Term 2 goals sheet. Please look it over with them and then sign and return, preferably before February break- just so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle of everything.
Tomorrow is our 100 day celebration! Hopefully everyone can bring 100 of something to celebrate the day. This week is particularly busy so we have been doing a lot of catch up, trying to finish a few things off before the February break. As you know, we are celebrating Valentine's Day in our class tomorrow! I am inviting students to wear pink, red, white or purple. They are also invited to dress as celebrities for the CSCC staff awards in the morning if they would prefer.
This week will be a busy one so we will just have sight words for our Friday quiz. You will see in the agenda that I grouped them by beginnings, either "w" or "th" and each word only has 4 letters. As you will see in today's agenda, I am asking students to bring 100 of something on February 16. This can be anything smallish, bobby pins, hair ties, lego pieces, pennies, macaroni noodles, stickers. I will remind them and we will continue to discuss closer to the date.
I sent home a note yesterday about Valentine's Day. Just a quick recap: if your child is bringing treats for the class, please let me know by Monday. We will spend some time in the afternoon passing out valentines, I sent home a list of names earlier this week, please make sure every child receives a valentine. This week we have been focussing on the beginning, middle and end of stories. Many levels of the reading assessment contain questions such as "what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story?" Children of this age often find it difficult to break the story down into three parts, as well as to pick out important information, rather than the minor details. This week in Religion, we read the story of Feeding of the 5000. Students also acted out this story in small groups. They did very well! Thank you to everyone who sent 2L milk cartons today, I so appreciate it. We just need a few more for our Valentine's mailboxes. I have sent home a list of all the class names. We will be distributing valentines on the 14th. If your child is bringing any, please make sure they bring one for everyone in our class.
We will have our spelling quiz as usual on Friday. Students have brought home a Math checklist for our current unit. It shows you areas they may need extra practice with as well as what we will be working on in the coming weeks.
Today's agenda message was "Ask me about Bossy R." Bossy R is what I use for R-controlled vowels (where the vowel always comes before the R). I tell the kids that the R is soooo bossy that the vowels don't get to say their sound, the R just takes over. Here are the sounds they make and little tricks if I have any, reading is easier than spelling of course.
-or: like the word or, which we already know, it is on our word wall -ar: arrrr like a pirate -ir/ur/er: rrrrrr, I tell kids er is the Bossy R at the end of a word, when we are spelling you just have to make your best guess between ir/ur. As we get further in the year, I tell kids to spell a word both ways and decide which one looks right (eg. gurl or girl, have you seen it in a book somewhere?, written it before?) Students have brought home our s blend picture-word sort for the week. |