Dear Parents,
Happy New Year! I hope that your family had a wonderful holiday season. Porter's Pups are off and running in the new year. This week was been filled with winter activities, stories, writing, and winter math fun. Our winter word bank includes words for winter clothing like hats, mittens, boots, coat, jacket and sweater. Snowman words include: eyes, nose, mouth, buttons, arms, scarf, and hat. Through stories and snowman building activities, students have been able to use these words to describe winter activities. I am very proud of their writing progress. They are working hard and showing much growth. We will continue this Winter unit for the next two weeks. We will also explore arctic animals and culminate the unit with an Eskimo Olympics day.
Our phonics sorts during the second semester will primarily help students to discriminate between sounds, blend sounds to create new words, and learn how to insert and change letters to make new words. As students become more proficient with short vowel sounds, we will begin to work with long vowel sounds and the rules for decoding them. This is an exciting time for young readers when they begin to "make sense" of all of these reading strategies and feel like "real" readers.
In Math, we will begin working with larger numbers. During this unit, we work with a chart called a "tens frame". It looks like a chart with five boxes across the top row and five boxes across the bottom row. We will establish and understanding of place value by counting objects using the tens frames and seeing that larger numbers are made up of some groups of tens and some more. They will learn to "count on" as an important addition strategy and be able to visually see that subtraction is the opposite of addition. We will also be using a number line to help with this connection.
Report Cards were sent home on Thursday for the 2nd Quarter. Please review and then sign the signature card and return in the brown envelope. The Report Card is yours to keep. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Our students have a renewed enthusiasm for "Reading the Rainbow" words. Mr. Giesler has begun recognizing those Kindergarten students who have achieved mastery of all 60 words each Friday on the GM Morning News. I have assured them that everyone learns at their own pace, however they would love for you to keep working with them daily at home so that they can be recognized when they accomplish their goal.
Please remember that school will be out for the MLK holiday on Monday. We began this week talking about Martin Luther King and his contributions. We shared many ideas about human rights and living together in peace.
Have a great weekend.
Sincerely,
Denise Porter
