Working Hard In "The Kourt Room!"

I have been very impressed with each and every child's determination in our classroom.  The children have been motivated, excited, and eager to learn.  I am excited to see all that the children will accomplish and learn throughout the school year.  It was great to meet with each of you during parent teacher conferences.  If you ever have any questions throughout the school year never hesitate to contact me.  I also want thank all of the families that joined us at last Wednesday's learning luncheon. I look forward to a great year working together!

Here is an update on what to expect this week:

In writing we are working on our second personal narrative writing piece.  As we work on this second piece we are using mentor texts to help the children make their writing better and more complex.  This week the children are going to choose another small entry writing idea and begin to bring the piece through the writing process.  As the children write their second piece they are going to use everything they learned throughout this unit and ideas from the different mentor texts in order to write an even better personal narrative published piece.  I look forward to seeing their writing grow!

In reading last week we started our character unit.  Within this unit the children will be using textual evidence, prior knowledge, inferring, synthesizing, and interpreting characters within books.  This past week the children learned how to infer a character's character traits and study character change throughout a story.  This week we will continue to get know characters and study the decisions they make and their relationships with supporting characters.  By studying the characters from books enables the children to make meaning and understand the books they read.  We will of course work in reading workshop where the children are reading their independent books.

The children continue to work on a Crayfish science unit with Mrs. Aupperle.  We are starting our weekly spelling routine this week - look for an information sheet going home on Monday that explains our spelling program and the homework assignments that go along with it.  There is another vocabulary quiz on Friday.

Just a reminder that the children's "Make Believe Map Project" is due next Tuesday, November 12th.  This is an at home project.

Have a great week!

Thanks,

Andrew