December, 2010
Mrs. Marilyn Burger Mrs. Jan Likowski Reading Teachers
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Happy Holidays from
Mrs. Burger and Mrs. Likowski
Parent Meeting
We would like to thank the parents who attended the Title I parent meeting in October. The parents who were present gained an understanding of how our reading program works to help students develop stronger reading skills, and some useful ideas for reading at home.
Parent Workshop
Scheduled
One of the decisions made at the parent meeting was to have a parent workshop to provide parents with information they can use to help their students at home. As a result of the surveys that you received with your student’s progress report, the parent workshop will be held on Wednesday, February 16th at 6:30 PM at Memorial.
Mrs. Likowski will lead a workshop for parents of her students focusing on comprehension and test taking strategies. Mrs. Burger will focus on phonics, comprehension, fluency, test taking, and reading games to play at home.
An invitation will be sent home after the break. Please RSVP so that we will know how many parents to prepare for. We are looking forward to seeing many of you in February.
Using Television to Improve Reading Skills
Watching television can actually help your child read better thanks to captioned television. Recent research has shown that children who view television that contains captions improve their word learning as well as their overall reading. Seeing the words on the screen while at the same time hearing the words helps readers learn to recognize words and read with fluency.
All televisions currently sold in the United States must have the ability to display captions on the television screen. If you have one of these televisions, please make sure that the captioning “switch” is turned on when your child watches television. Talk with your child about how paying attention to the captions will improve their reading. Encourage your child to “read the screen” as he or she watches TV.
Your child may find the captions distracting and bothersome at first. This will only last a few days until you and your child become comfortable with captioned TV. It won’t take long before the captions become an accepted part of the television experience.
Captioned television is a very easy way to help your child in reading. Since most elementary school children spend some time watching TV everyday, the amount of reading students do will increase significantly just from the addition of captioned television viewing. The more that students read, the better readers they will become.
(Taken from the book, From Phonics to Fluency by Timothy V. Rasinski and Nancy D. Padak)
Consider Nonfiction Books for Holiday Gifts
Nonfiction books are informational books such as concept books, nature books, photo essays, magazines, etc. They also include biographies. Our students need to be able to read and understand non-fiction text. State achievement tests are predominantly non-fiction, and the district benchmark assessments show that our students continue to have difficulty reading and understanding nonfiction. Children of all ages enjoy nonfiction, and for some children it provides a way into literacy that fiction does not. So perhaps some nonfiction books or magazine subscriptions might be very worthwhile as Christmas gifts. Buy books about subjects in which your child is interested, and help his/her reading grow.
Other Gifts to Promote Reading and Writing
Journals: Simple notebooks marked with your children’s names will encourage them to write their daily thoughts, experiences and feelings. Each night plan a 10-minute “quiet time” for journal writing. Parents write in response thus providing positive role model experiences. (It can also be very relaxing for busy parents!)
A Box of Writing Tools:
Take a large gift box and fill it with blank and lined paper, pencils, pencil sharpener, ruler, eraser, crayons, markers, stapler, paper punch, etc. Your children can write many books with these handy supplies organized in one box. Hollos and other stores have a variety of pens, pencils and papers that would help stimulate an interest in writing.
A Family Mailbox
Decorate a shoebox or cereal box that can be used by all family members when writing notes to each other. Children will check the mailbox often, anxiously waiting for a note. (So will adults!) This idea could also be adapted to using e-mail on the computer. You can leave e-mail for your child and he/she can respond.
Helpful Websites for Parents
Here are a few websites that have useful parent information plus games and activities for children. Check them out.
The website for the Ohio Parent Resource Information Center is
The News from
Mrs. Burger’s Room
We have been working hard in first and second grades. Most of the students are working on becoming a Superstar Reader. If your child has not returned any blue record sheets yet, please remind them how important it is to practice reading at home. The children can earn prizes and attend the ice cream party at the end of the year if they reach 100 stars. The children who do not participate always seem to regret it as time goes on.
I am happy to report that most of the students are getting their Friday Folders signed regularly. This is a very important part of my program in that I can let you know as soon as I see a problem in school. I also include information on how to help at home. Thanks for your continued support!
First Grade News
The first grade students are working very hard on their word wall words. These are the high frequency words that make up the majority of written communication. Many of these words cannot be sounded out, so it is important that the children memorize these words and recognize them on sight.
We will be working on consonant blends and digraphs in our small groups along with early comprehension skills.
It is important when you read with your student that you remind them to use the strategies they have learned to sound out words. These strategies include looking at the pictures for clues, using the sounds of the letters in the word, and using the rest of the words in the sentence to help determine what the unknown word is.
Second Grade News
We have been reviewing vowel sounds, “magic e,” and high frequency words. We have also been working on word families and how they help make reading and spelling easier.
The children have also enjoyed reading poems to their fellow second graders, the first grade students I hope you enjoyed listening to the Thanksgiving poem the children brought home in November.
In January we will begin working with written comprehension using fiction and nonfiction materials. We will also continue working on fluency and phonics skills.
Have a safe and joyous holiday!!
Mrs. Likowski’s Room
What’s New In Our Classes?
THIRD GRADE
All the third grade classes have been working on reading a selection and answering comprehension questions about the story. We are learning how to go back to the text to scan for key words to help us find answers to the questions. We are practicing writing good short answer responses in complete sentences.
We have been reading the book, Chocolate Fever, by Robert Kimmel Smith. The students are enjoying the adventure of Henry Green as he make some poor choices and suffers the consequences! The story is helping us practice our reading processing strategies with a fun and engaging story.
Please continue to encourage your child to read their Fluency Stories in their folders at least three times a week. I am seeing a lot of improvement in their fluency scores!
FOURTH GRADE
All the fourth grade students have enjoyed the classroom adventures of Lucus Cott in the story, Class Clown, by Johanna Hurwitz. While reading this story, we were able to make predictions about what we thought would happen next in the story, discuss unfamiliar vocabulary words, and learn about how the main character’s personality may change and grow from the beginning to the end of the story.
To help us increase our abilities to comprehend what we are reading, we have been using the Click-n-Clunk strategy. This helps the students focus their attention to understanding what they are reading because they must repeat the key points back to the class! I’m pleased to say that many students are improving because of this practice.
Please continue to encourage your child to read their Fluency Stories in their folders at least three times a week. I am seeing a lot of improvement in their fluency scores!
FIFTH GRADE
We have been working in the Houghton Mifflin Theme Books. We have read stories about hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. These stories about “Nature’s Fury” have allowed us to practice fifth grade responding questions. We learned how to use subtitles as questions to help us clarify and focus while we are reading the selection. We practiced predicting and asking ourselves questions as we read, too.
Our new theme is “Give It All You’ve Got.” We met Yo Yo Ma and read about his life and hard work and dedication to become a famous cellist. We will continue practicing predicting, clarifying and monitoring what we are reading so our comprehension skills will continue to develop and grow.
Merry Christmas and
Happy New Year!