October 19th, 2023

Hello families,

Our fish creek trip went really well. The weather cleared up in the late morning and students had a blast exploring nature. We started the day with a land acknowledgement and group smudge. We then listened to a story, took part in a walk alongside the creek and saw a deer! Later students broke out in their groups and explored the park, referring to their field journals to guide their observations. Thank you to the parent volunteers who joined us!

During their Daly L.A. stations students have been practicing independently using the Montessori materials and literacy games. I am very impressed with how much our class loves to read! When working with me, students have been practicing their alphabet sounds, phonetic awareness of sight words, segmenting and blending, and reading "just right" books for their group level.

To promote sight word practice through decoding and writing, I will be posting the "Words of the Week" on my blog again this year. Students are encouraged to practice these sight words at home as well as during our Daily L.A. time. We will be doing a "spelling check in" of these words each Friday! Here are the words for the upcoming week:

Words of the Week

the

and

you

that

Spicy Words

when

should

these

We also began our first Writing Workshop this year. This program was created by Adrienne Gear and focuses on the quality of writing versus the quantity. It consists of the steps 1. PLAN, 2. SHARE, 3. DRAFT, and 4. REVISE. Our mentor book is "If Instead of a Person" by Courtney Defriend.

In math we continued to focus on number patterns and place value using base ten blocks. Students also completed a patterns assessment based on their grade.

In Science we started a pumpkin inquiry. Looking at two pumpkins students filled out a KWL chart and began making scientific estimations using forms of measurement.