Weekly News: March 12-16

We will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day this Friday by wearing green, sharing our Leprechaun Traps and having fun St. Patrick's Day centers. Don't forget to turn in your leprechaun traps by Thursday at the latest! We will have a special leprechaun museum and set them up to try to catch them on Friday!  

Next week is Spirit Week at ILCS so we get to have fun dress up days AGAIN! BSC is actually having different dress up days than CSC and here they are: 

Monday - Sports Day 
Tuesday - Crazy Sock Day 
Wednesday - Crazy Hair or Hat Day 
Thursday - Neon or Bright Color Day 
Friday - St. Patricks/GREEN DAY! 

This is our last week of school before spring break. We have NO SCHOOL for the next two weeks. Spring break is a perfect time to work on your Community Service Projects! I hope you have a wonderful two weeks off with your families! We will see you back on Tuesday, April 3. 


What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: There will be no new sight words introduced until after Spring Break.  Please take this time to review ALL of our words introduced so far.  Remember, sight words are words that your child should recognize instantly.  These are not words your child should be sounding out!  Please continue to work on these words. 

Letter Team: There will be no new letter teams introduced until after Spring Break.  Please take this time to review ALL of our letter teams introduced so far. Many children know most of the letter teams, but have a hard time applying them into decoding words. A great idea would be to write words (or make flashcards) with letter teams inside them and have your child decode the word for you, applying the letter team. (example: FARM - "I see the letter team AR inside the word FARM.")

Reading: We will read books about leprechauns and spring. We will continue to explore non-fiction texts as we discuss the main idea and key details from the text. Students will continue to read fluency passages at their levels and their self-selected good-fit books from the library. Many students have begun taking AR quizzes on books they have been reading. 

Writing: This week, we will write a procedural writing on "How to Catch a Leprechaun". Students will use their very own leprechaun traps to think of and write the steps of how they plan on catching the leprechaun. 

Math: We will continue to work hard on decomposing and composing numbers within ten, as well as addition and subtraction problems, and identifying the place value (tens and ones) of two-digit numbers. 

Leadership: We will continue to ROAR and discuss what it means to have a growth mindset!

Homework: March 12-16

Flashcards: There are no new sight words or letter teams this week, so it's a great week to review ALL of the sight words and letter teams! Catch up on those that you are still struggling with! 

Phonemic Awareness: Please work with your child on: rhyming, blending, segmenting, syllables, and beginning/middle/ending sounds. 

Reading:  Play Smarty Ants for 10-15 minutes each night. In addition to Smarty Ants, we ask that you read your Book Bag every night. This includes: fluency passage, paper books, and library books. 

Writing: Continue to work on your writing goals as you write three to five sentences every day in your at-home journal. 

Math: Play Dreambox for 10-15 minutes each night. Continue to discuss ways to make 5 (and ways to make 10!), numbers in base ten (in the number 16, how many tens and how many ones?), addition and subtraction number problems and word problems, 2D and 3D shapes, and the Doubles Song. Count the money in your bank.

QR Codes: Download and print the QR Code practice pages on ParentSquare. Work on these pages together. It would be a great idea to print the addition and subtraction pages as well as all the number bonds pages for your child to practice at home each day. Stick these in a page protector and use an expo marker so you can reuse them day after day and not have to print a billion copies :) 

SPECIAL Turn-In Homework:  If you have not turned it in yet, your homework will be to build a leprechaun trap!!! We are going to be talking and writing about how we might catch a leprechaun. You will have one more week to build your leprechaun trap with your family - be as creative as you can! A good idea is to google or pinterest leprechaun trap examples for lots of fun ideas! These traps can be brought in any day,  but will be due in class no later than Thursday, March 15th. We are going to have a leprechaun trap museum and do a special project with them! Have fun! 

Weekly News: March 5-9

We had so much fun dressing up and celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday. Thank you for all of your help, time, donations, and to all of our guest readers! Make sure to check out our pictures on the ParentSquare post. 

Parent Conferences for this trimester will be on a NEED ONLY basis and will be taking place the next two weeks. 

Continue to work on your community service projects. These will be due the first week of May - They will need to be turned in before May 11th to qualify for the Leadership Banquet. Please see our Community Service Tab for more information and feel free to email me if you have any questions.  

Upcoming Events:

Friday, March 16: ST. PATRICK'S WEAR GREEN DAY AND CENTERS

March 19-April 2: SPRING BREAK!!!
   

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: OVER, UNDER, LEFT, RIGHT, PUT.

Letter Team:  DGE (sounding like "j" like in BADGE, LEDGE, and FRIDGE).

Reading: We will begin taking our leveled fluency passages home again. We will be learning to "find the evidence" in the text to help us answer questions. We will begin new reading groups this week and work on leveled books within these groups. Our focus this week is NON-FICTION books. We will learn to find the main idea and key details in our non-fiction books. 

Writing: This week, we will be learning how to write an opinion piece. We will discuss that writing an opinion is telling "What and Why". For example, "What is your favorite season and why? What is your favorite animal and why?" and so on. We will also write letters and posters to leprechauns, thinking of tricky ways that we can trap him. 
Math: We will focus hard on decomposing and composing numbers within ten. You can help at home by asking your children problems like, "If I need 10 cupcakes and I only have 4, how many more would I need?" I am finding that students do a great job referring to the tens frame and answering "ways to make 10" questions, but struggle with ways to make other numbers, so let's make sure we are also asking, "If we need 7 apples and we have four, how many more would we need?" We will be discussing different strategies for this in class. 

Leadership: We will continue to ROAR and discuss what it means to have a growth mindset!

Homework: March 5-9

Flashcards: Don't forget to make new flashcards for each sight word and letter team. New words for this week are: OVER, UNDER, LEFT, RIGHT, PUT and the new letter team is: DGE - (sounding like "j" like in BADGE, LEDGE, and FRIDGE).

Phonemic Awareness: Please work with your child on: rhyming, blending, segmenting, syllables, and beginning/middle/ending sounds. 

Reading:  Play Smarty Ants for 10-15 minutes each night. In addition to Smarty Ants, we ask that you read your Book Bag every night. This includes: fluency passage, paper books, and library books. 

Writing: Continue to work on your writing goals as you write three to five sentences every day in your at-home journal. 

Math: Play Dreambox for 10-15 minutes each night. Continue to discuss ways to make 5 (and ways to make 10!), numbers in base ten (in the number 16, how many tens and how many ones?), addition and subtraction number problems and word problems, 2D and 3D shapes, and the Doubles Song. Count the money in your bank.

QR Codes: Download and print the QR Code practice pages on ParentSquare. Work on these pages together. It would be a great idea to print the addition and subtraction pages as well as all the number bonds pages for your child to practice at home each day. Stick these in a page protector and use an expo marker so you can reuse them day after day and not have to print a billion copies :) 

SPECIAL Turn-In Homework:  For the next two weeks, your homework will be to build a leprechaun trap!!! We are going to be talking and writing about how we might catch a leprechaun. You will have two weeks to build your leprechaun trap with your family - be as creative as you can! A good idea is to google or pinterest leprechaun trap examples for lots of fun ideas! These traps will be due in class no later than Thursday, March 15th. We are going to have a leprechaun trap museum and do a special project with them! Have fun!