Spelling Assessment tomorrow

We worked extensively on the phonic skills oa, and ow.  We missed two days of direct instructional this week, so we spent a little longer helping students learn the phonics rules.  Hopefully the students are prepared for our assessment tomorrow.  We learned about where the vowel sounds need to formulate in our throats and mouths.   

 We have added a new movement program. We are using a program entitled  " Go Noodle."  Ask your child about the "chair" to help prepare our bodies for learning.  We are going to add several short movement and yoga activities to our day.  Especially during the winter months.  Research has proven that students that engage in at least 20 minutes of physical exercise twice a day, or 20- one minute breaks achieve higher levels of learning.  Movement is essential in Team Tipton.  

 Mrs. Sparks visited our room today.  She is  completing her masters degree in reading.  She is a long time friend of Ms. Tipton.   She helped in many ways during the morning portion of the day.

 We made a K,W, L chart as an introduction to our Penguin Unit.

Ask your child about the Read the Room activity.  The cards  introduced Penguin facts.    Tomorrow we will read each fact again and add to out "What we know about penguins" chart.  I know that the students will catch the errors that they thought were facts. 
  ( Penguins are part of the bird family, and they are cold blooded.)  

We will be adding lots of new vocabulary words to our word bank during this unit of study.  

The students rotated to a new reading station when they heard the triangle ding.   We didn't even have to use words to know when it was time to move to the next station.  

 Ask your child about their reading partner. The partners will change in February.  

Ms. Sparks lead the large groups in reading a penguin fact book.  t  

Ms. Tipton meet with the individual reading clubs.  Weekly reading homework will be sent home tomorrow.  Each reading club will have penguin leveled reading activities.  

We took a pre-test on place value.  Instruction will be geared towards each child's ability.  Keep in mind that all students take a pre and post test over the math units.   

We are using hands on materials to review tens and ones.  We worked on trading 10 ones for a tens rod today.  Tomorrow we will beginning our unit on addition and subtraction to 20.  Many students will work on number up to 100.   We also took our first Mad Minute timed addition test.  Everyone took the +1 assessment,  If your child passed the assessment, they will move on the +2 assessment.  It is imperative that the students learn their facts quickly.  Memorization of the basic facts will aid them for the rest of their lives.   

Jordan is one of the pet monitors this week.  She and Elin are taking good care of Alex .  

Alex wants to remind everyone that tomorrow is the last day of the month.  We will be cashing in our dojo's .  Also, all monthly reading logs are due.   

Code word to whisper to Ms. Tipton:  "Antarctica "