Minion Newsletter
March Edition
Can you believe it is the end of March?!? We have been extremely busy in room 430 this month!
We kicked off the month celebrating Dr. Seuss and Read Across America week. I kindly thank all of you who donated Dr. Seuss books for the week, our library was stocked! I enjoyed all the fun days we had planned for that week and seeing many of the creative outfits!
In February we celebrated Tripp and Sydney’s birthdays. In March we celebrated Hadley, Laura, Dominic, and Andrew’s birthdays this month. Thank you to our mystery readers and for the book donations.
In Reading Street we have learned the letters Gg, Ww, and Ee. We also are working on consonant blends. Two separate sounds that blend together. For example: clap- cl is the blend or frog- fr is the blend. We worked with identifying blends at the beginning and end of words. Example- desk- sk is the ending blend.
We read the stories: A Little Mouse, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, If You Could Go to Antarctica, and Abuela. With each story we worked on specific literacy skills. We have been working on: sequencing a story (first, then, next, last), drawing conclusions (why do you think that happened? what evidence do you have?), identifying character (what they look like, how they feel, how they fit in in the story), classify/categorizing information, and identifying setting.
In Reading Groups we are working on decoding simple words and learning our sight words. Many of the children can recognize a lot of the sight words and I am now challenging them to have that translate in their writing. If they know the word of is spelled o-f then they should practice writing that in their journals/writing instead of specific sounds /u/ /v/. They also have the word wall to refer to if they want to check any of their sight word spellings. *This is just a challenge for those that are ready.* We are also working on trying to read a text fluently. I have talked a lot about how it would sound if we read like robots (slow and choppy) versus reading with expression.
In Envisions, we finished up topic 9 where we learned all about teen numbers. We are working on topic 10 now and we are working specifically with teen numbers and manipulating them, counting sets of teen numbers, and writing groups of teen numbers. Students should be practicing identifying teen numbers and decomposing them (breaking them apart- 18 = 10+8). For extra math practice at home: challenge the children to count as high as they can. We want them to be able to count 100!
We learned that March ‘comes in like a lion and out like a lamb’. We discussed what that could mean and read a story about it. We also watched the scholastic video, which gave us great visuals of March weather. We have had some lion and lamb days this month! We made a craft with a lion on one side and a lamb on the other. Adding on to that concept of weather, we are beginning to discover signs of Spring. (flowers blooming, warmer weather, baby animals) We will be talking about that a lot in the upcoming month. The scholastic magazines that are sent home are great resources to learn more about science/social studies!
Upcoming in April-
Parent Conferences April 6th and 7th
April Vacation- 18-22
Literacy:
letters Jj, Xx, Uu, and Vv.
Reading Concepts-
Realism/fantasy
Cause and effect
Compare/contrast
Plot
Envisions:
using patterns to count to higher numbers (30, 50, 100)
Skip counting by 10’s to 100- Counting by 1’s to 100
Count forward from any number- ‘count on from 62…’
April showers bring May flowers
Signs of Spring
Earth Day- How can we protect our Earth?
Thank you all for your donations!! We are only in need of spoons and baby wipes!
Looking forward to another great month,
Ashley Trudeau