Red Clover Books!

It is great to be back!  March is always a wonderful time of year as we have some new activities and new learning happening....and I get the opportunity to meet with you all to share your child's accomplishments since we last met!  I am looking forward to seeing you all soon for Parent Conferences.

This month we will be reading the Red Clover Book nominees. These ten books are chosen by a group of Vermont teachers and librarians across the state.  All children in grades K-3 read the books throughout the year and then vote for their favorite book in April. We started by previewing each book with a picture walk and talked about the genre of the book.  This month we will read each book and write about our favorite ones and why we enjoyed them.  This week we started with The Wall in the Middle of the Book by Jon Agee.  Ask your child to tell you about the book and their opinion...was it one they liked or did not like?

During Reader's Workshop, we talked about that the books we are reading are becoming bigger and longer.  We sorted some books in the classroom from easier to harder and noted characteristics of books as they get more difficult: more words, smaller print, and longer sentences.  However, we did noticed that many early reader books have patterns.  If we can figure out the patterns in the sentences, then the book becomes easier to read. For example, "Mouse finds a cookie.  Mouse finds a strawberry.  Mouse finds a carrot".  If we do not know the word that changes at the end, we can use the picture to help us figure out the unknown word. See if your child can notice the patterns in the sentences he or she reads. 

We also continued to celebrate reading with our Scholastic Let's Find Out Magazine that honored Read Across America Day (which happened on March 2nd!).  In our magazine, we learned about different genres of books that we can find in the library: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, mystery, comics, biographies, and fairy tales.  Ask your child which genre he or she likes best?




Next week, we will be starting Reading Groups at Reader's Workshop.  During this time, I will be meeting with small groups of students to practice reading books at their appropriate reading level. We will be focusing on using our reading superpowers and building reading fluency.  While I am working with groups, the children who are not with me will be going to Literacy Stations.  This week I introduced all the stations and we practiced the literacy activities.  The stations include writing, listening to stories on the ipads, reading from book boxes, and word work.  We are looking forward to getting started with this next week!  As we will be using ipads to as our listening center, your child will need his or her headphones.  If you have not sent those to school yet, please do.  Thanks!

We have also begun a new writing genre during Writer's Workshop: opinion writing.  We are working on stating an opinion and backing it up with reasons by following three steps:  1. Think   2. Decide   3. Explain.  This week we talked about favorite recess activities.  As a group, we brainstormed recess activity ideas and then each child had to decide on a favorite and write about why that was a favorite activity.  We even had to learn a new sight word....and it's a really long word:  because!  This word helped us to explain why an activity was a favorite.  What's your child's favorite recess activity?



Lastly in  math, we are continuing our study of shapes; however, this time we are focusing on 3-D shapes.  We have discussed the characteristics of spheres and cylinders and then searched for them in the classroom.  Can your child find any spheres or cylinders at home?

Have a wonderful weekend!