What We've Been Up To!

Reader's Workshop: This week, we have been talking about how good readers get their minds ready before they read. We learned that we always read the title, study the cover, and think about what the book will be about prior to reading. We talked about how strong readers also take a quick picture walk to think about what will happen and who will be in the story. Then, we hold all that information in their minds as we read! We've been practicing these strategies during read to self time and with our reading buddies. You can help make this automatic for your little one by encouraging this while you are reading at home too!

Writer's Workshop: We are working hard on our small moment stories. We are writing true stories from our own lives, and I just love hearing and reading about the unique experiences each one of us has had! We've been doing a lot of talking about how writers plan for their stories by touching and telling what they will write on each page, quickly sketching to hold that idea, and then imagining each part carefully before they start to write. We have been also adding to this anchor chart each day. Yesterday, we talked about how good writers go back and write more details for each part of the story by thinking about who was there, what happened, when did it happen, how did it happen, and why did it happen?

Math Workshop: In math, we are working to build our number sense. We did some work with dominos and made these domino dot cards that we used to play a matching game. This helps us quickly recognize numbers and develop a sense of how to represent different numbers.

Today we did a lot of talking about the hundreds chart (a 10 x 10 grid that with numbers 1-100) and what we notice when we study it. We colored all kinds of patterns on our own hundreds chart (10s, teens, numbers that end in 8, etc.). These will be a great tool for everyone to use throughout the year because we will use it for all sorts of purposes.

Science: We've been integrating learning about pumpkins in literacy and math this week. We will continue our pumpkin learning into next week as well.

Just a reminder that reading logs are due tomorrow along with book bags. I will fill the bags with new books and the folder with a new response sheet. They will return home on Friday. Remember, I encourage reading books from your house too! It was wonderful to see from last night's homework how many books everyone has at home. Music to my ears. : )