Weekly Recap

First off, a very brief recap of Literacy Week (March 11-15). We had an awesome assembly from children’s author Julie Lee. She read us her book “Broccolipunzle: A Fractured Fairy Tale” and talked to the students about how what makes them different makes them powerful. We spent the whole week focused on reading (our class got VERY excited about putting a leaf on our reading tree–we read more books that week than ever before!) and writing. We loved it!

Continuing the reading theme, this past week the schoolwide reading support groups were changed. Many students in our class were added to reading groups. This means that you may start receiving emails from Ms. Jamie or Ms. Wendy or getting small books sent home to practice with your student along with instructions. Please take the time to read with your student, either those books or doing the Dyad Reading program I posted about earlier (linked here). As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Last week we had a teacher work day and the Lower Elementary team has started to collaborate on aligning and improving our curriculum structure for next year. Many of the lessons and content will be similar to years’ past, but we are working to organize the flow of our lessons and work together better in order to provide a more cohesive structure. I am VERY excited about the changes that we are making and am looking forward to next year already!

In the classroom, one of our highlights this week was the lesson on communication as a fundamental human need. Prior to this, we had discussed physical needs like food, clothing, shelter, defense, but we have started to move into non-physical needs. First we discussed what we thought life would be like without any form of communication. It was eye-opening for the children to realize how much we rely on communicating with each other to survive! Then we listened to the phrase “I love you” in 60 different languages so they could hear how differently people communicate around the world. Finally, we watched a video about the Navajo Code Talkers and how their unique language and willingness to serve their country was a major factor in the US victory in the Pacific Area in World War II.

We made two-layer clocks with our younger students to learn both hours and minutes and I have already seen great improvement in their ability to tell time! They move the hands on their clock to mimic what they see on our classroom clock and then are able to fold down the hour tab to see the minutes. I have linked a similar project here if you are interested in replicating this at home.

Thank you again for all you do!

Spelling Lists 3/25-3/29

I am so sorry that I didn’t send out the lists for last week. Between the half day on Friday and the teacher work day on Monday, my schedule was thrown off and I completely forgot to update the blog. I didn’t notice until one of the students mentioned in the middle of our test that she hadn’t been able to practice this week at home because I never sent out the lists. My apologies! If you ever notice this in the future, please feel free to let me know so that I can correct it.

Without further ado, here are the lists for this week!

Pink Group: nap, wag, cap, rag, map, bag, tag, lap

Red Group (beginning cluster only): shot, cheese, whip, thorn, ship, chick, whale, thumb

Orange Group (beginning cluster only): broom, block, grapes, glass, grill, bridge, gras, brush, glove, blanket

Yellow Group: tag, dog, pig, bug, leg, flag, beg, dig, frog, hug

Dark Green Group: lost, drove, road, love, soft, soap, slope, cross, none, toad, stone, chose

Green Group: care, hair, part, wear, hare, stare, dark, where, stair, bear, pear, shark, pair, square, heart, sharp

Blue Group: knife, wrong, gnat, known, wrist, gnaw, rap, wrap, knee, wrinkle, ring, wring, wreath, knob, knot, knead

Field Trip April 18th!

We Lower Elementary teachers decided to add another field trip for this year, which is a movie for Earth Day! It will take place on April 18th and the movie will begin at 9:15am. Ideally, students need to be dropped off at the Megaplex at Ogden’s Junction next to Fly High by 8:50 AM. The film should run about 70 mins (we aren’t 100% sure how long the film is), so pick up will be at 10:30 AM. If your child needs a ride to or from the movie theater, please email myself or our room mom so that we can arrange rides.  We are only allowed 3 chaperones for this trip and no younger siblings may attend. If you are interested in being a chaperone, please let me know. Cover letters and permission slips will be sent out soon!

Last Home Project

Our last home project of the year is here!

Here’s a reminder of what it entails: it is a creative writing project due April 12th. This assignment can be based on something that happened to them or someone they know, or from their imagination. They can choose to write a poem, a song, a play, or story. This project can be simple or complex depending on your child’s ability, and interest. We would like this to be a fun, creative experience for your child and family.  This project must also include a visual to accompany their writing. This can be a variety of things–drawing/illustration, painting, clay, puppet, mobile, booklet, shadow box, etc. Have fun with it!

Weekly Recap and Tidbits

Thank you to all the parents who came on our field trip to Union Station! The kids had a great time and we have been able to revisit some of the ideas learned there in our cultural lessons this week, including information about standard measures of time, land and water forms, types of rocks and more. It was definitely the highlight of our week!

We also got back into our regular spelling groups and did our second week of response-based Writer’s Workshop. On Friday mornings we are reading a short book together as a class and then writing from a prompt based on that book. The first week we read a simple biography about Ruby Bridges (the first African-American child to integrate an elementary school in the South) as part of Black History Month and then wrote either about how we can choose to be brave or kind in our own life or paraphrased her story. This past week we read “What If You Had Animal Eyes?” (generously donated by a family in our class at the last book fair–thank you!!) and each child got to pick which set of animal eyes they would want and why. The class has been doing a great job with their responses and I plan to continue this more specific form of Writer’s Workshop for the rest of the year.

This coming week is our school’s Literacy Week. I have created another blog post with many of those details, but I’m also attaching the flyer here for Literacy Night, which will be on Tuesday. I hope to see many of you there!

Spelling Lists 3/11-3/15

Pink Group – cat, mat, hat, rat, sat, bat, fat, pat

Red Group (beginning sound only) – thumb, wheel, thorn, whistle, think, whale, thimble, whip, thirteen

Orange Group (beginning blend only) – slide, block, plus, sled, blade, plum, sleep, blanket, plug

Yellow Group – can, pin, sun, man, win, fun, plan, skin, run, chin

Dark Green Group – kick, take, took, pack, shake, cook, sock, like, book, truck, spoke, look

Green Group – wild, told, film, loss, kind, both, fist, lost, child, gold, ghost, mild, blind, roll, pond, most

Blue Group – sound, brown, tough, ground, town, found, frown, rough, mowth, grown, south, owl, shout, cloud, count, howl

Literacy Week March 11-15

Next week we are celebrating Literacy Week! We have some fun plans for the students to engage in and get excited about reading.

Students can bring a drawing or copy of their favorite book cover. We will be hanging them outside the classroom and we’re looking forward to seeing all their favorites! Whenever a student reads a book during the week, they can make a leaf to hang from our Literacy Tree in the front hallway. Ms. Holly and Ms. Kirsten did a wonderful job making our tree and we can’t wait to see it filled with leaves!

There will be tables set up for a book swap and everyone in the school is welcome to bring books to give away and pick some up in return.

Our biggest event is Literacy Night!  It will be on Tuesday, March 12th from 5:30-7:00 pm. Our students can dress up as their favorite character. We will have many activities (making bookmarks, reader’s theater and more!) and a raffle will be going on throughout the night. Usborne books will also be available for purchase in the library. This is a great time to celebrate literacy with the family and should be a fun-filled night.

We will have a schoolwide Read-a-Thon on Friday, March 15th from 10:00-11:00 am. Your student can bring in a book from home to read and share with the class or they are welcome to read books from our classroom library.

Dyad Reading

The question I got most often at Parent/Teacher conferences was how you as parents/guardians/concerned adults can academically support the students in our class.

As a Montessorian, my first answer is to say to make sure that your student is getting a lot of hands-on play and exploration time. It might seem counter-productive that one of the best ways to make academic progress is not doing something academic, but nothing compares to having real experiences and social interactions with family and friends and nature. It strengthens connections in the brain, helps improve executive function and generally leads to healthier, happier kids… who are likely to learn more!

My second answer is to read. There are many ways to do this: sight word and spelling practice, having your student use the online Imagine Learning reading program (let me know if you need their login information again!), reading out loud to your student, having your student listen to audiobooks and more, but the most effective way is to read with them.

In class, we do a special kind of reading called Dyad reading.  This is something the students do after lunch for 15 minutes.  It is a special kind of buddy reading based on students’ Lexile level and it is the reason that I asked so many of you to help put grade level labels on our books before Christmas.  I listed the students from highest to lowest and split the list in half and match the students up.  One partner is the “higher reader” and the other is the “developing reader.”  The higher reader tracks the words by moving their finger either above or below where they are reading and the buddies read aloud together.  The developing reader hears their buddy read the word, sees the word and says the word, trying to keep up with the higher reader. This effectively pulls them into reading more difficult books fluently.  The University of Utah has seen positive research with this reading method and data shows this kind of buddy reading can help significantly help raise reading scores.

Dyad reading is something you as parents can do with your child. You want to pick books that are slightly too difficult for your child so that they have to listen to you as they read along. You sit next to each other reading the book out loud at the same time and you as the adult are in charge of moving your finger under or over the words and reading at a good pace that isn’t too fast or slow for your child. This can be a great way to spend time with your student and also support their growing literacy. If you are interested in doing this at home and have any questions, please be in touch! For more information, please take a moment to look at this:  DYAD READING.