Thursday, October 15, 2009

Unit 3 Underway

Hey Readers! With parent teacher conferences just around the corner, Unit 2 has been completed and Unit 3 in reading and math is underway. The challenge with the early months of first grade is that no one skill is taught to mastery meaning skills are merely introduced or reviewed before new concepts and skills are introduced again. Just about every concept, skill, strategy, and procedure in math and language arts is a foundational skill by which students will build further thinking, understanding, and application.

If you have been checking in on your child's Mail folder you should see the (almost daily) math home links and decodable books. When a new unit begins, there is a unit overview from Everyday Math that is sent home and it has no homework attached to it. That overview is for grown-ups to have an idea of the concepts and skills that will be introduced and worked on in the next unit. Some days flow more smoothly than others and in some cases, math gets squeezed at the end of the day and home links are a great way for your child to connect what they did cover in school with you at home. The same goes for decodable books, some days we focus on specific phonetic skills with other days being treated as review days. Typically what you see in your child's Mail folder is a snapshot of topics, concepts, skills and/or activities that took place that day. If you see nothing in their folder, that means most of the day involved whole class lessons with workbook and collected forms of assessment.

Keep your schedules up to date with the Upcoming Events section in the right hand column and thanks for sending your children to school with such great looking outfits and smiles for picture day! See you on the blacktop!