An October Update

It's hard to believe our first trimester is almost over!  The past few months have gone by so quickly, and the kids are continuing to work hard and show some outstanding progress!

Here's a look at what we've been up to lately...

Word Study: Today we began a new word family, _am words.  We are focusing on: am, ham, slam, ram, Pam, and the sight words: to, the.  We are using our letter sounds to build the words in each word family.  Words like to and the cannot be sounded out, so we are practicing them using songs and lots of repetition!  On Friday afternoon, we played Word Study BINGO using all the words we have learned since the beginning of the year.  It was amazing how well every student did with finding the words quickly.  I was so excited to see their progress.

Centers: The students are continuing to work well during our Reading/Writing and Math centers.  We use a visual timer to monitor the time spent at each center, and then rotate through each station.  Our Reading/Writing centers also have the pleasure of including our speech teacher Mrs. Frazee on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Mrs. Frazee runs her own center that always includes fun speech activities.  The students look forward to this center most of all!  She always brings exciting props and hands on activities that the children enjoy.  In addition to speech centers, we have also usually have at least one center focused on Word Study, one center focused on writing, and one center focused on letters and sounds.

Mrs. Frazee leads a fun fall center with apples.

We practice writing our letters in salt trays at a writing center.

 

Creating word family books at a Word Study Center.

Reader's Workshop: We have been working on the following Reader's Workshop lessons recently.

• Readers keep their eyes on the book.
• Readers think about the book they are reading.
• Readers reread books they enjoy.
• Readers read with a friend.

Life Skills: We have spent a lot of time working on identifying feelings.  Specifically happy, mad, and sad.  We also discussed things that could make us feel each of these feelings, and also what can we do to feel better again.  With the help of our school social worker, Ms. Weston, we have been introduced to self-calming break techniques from the Conscious Discipline series.  You can download the four calming techniques posters and also information about how to use them here.

Fun and Exciting News:

• LINKS (peer buddies) are now helping us in the morning coming into the building, at our lockers, and during breakfast time.  We have four LINKS, both boys and girls joining us each morning.  
• Our therapy dog from last school year, Pepper, is visiting us again on Thursday afternoons.  The kids look forward to her visit all week.

 

• Halloween Party: A note will go home tomorrow (Tuesday, October 16th) about our upcoming Halloween party.  Since we do not have school October 26th - November 4th, we will be having our Halloween party on Thursday, October 25th from 2:00 - 3:00pm.  Family and Friends are invited to attend.