Kindergarten Welcome back to school!! We have lots to do this month. The children will be finishing up the lowercase alphabet in Fundations and beginning the uppercase letters. The will be using what they know about letters and sounds to continue writing words and sentences. We will also be working on two digit numbers in math by playing games like Top-it and Monster squeeze. Family snow projects will also be discussed in class; we hope you have fun making them!!!
1st Grade News Brrrr…..First graders will be traveling to Antarctica during the month of January. We will study about penguins and other animals of the South Pole. In January we will begin Unit 4 in math which will include concepts in measurement and place value. If you find opportunities at home to reinforce these new skills your child will benefit. These winter months mark a pointed and uninterrupted educational time of year when children do their most important learning. Please encourage your first graders to spend January nights reading their favorite stories and submitting reading logs on a regular basis. With cold weather here to stay, please be sure to send a hat and mittens with your child every day. We’d like to extend a special thank you to our parents who were able to help us during our gingerbread house construction project. We had so many wonderful donations of candies, cookies, and cereals. The houses were magnificent! Happy Winter! Grade One Teachers Gr. 2 News Happy New Year! Second graders will continue their study of author Jan Brett this month. We will also learn about questioning and inferring while reading. The questioning strategy teaches students how to pose questions about the texts they are reading and encourages them to read actively as they work to answer the questions they have posed. Inferring, or "reading between the lines" involves forming a best guess using evidence (context clues, picture clues, etc.). In Math, we will be studying simple geometry concepts. Students will learn about lines, symmetry and simple 2-D shapes. They will also learn 3-D shapes, such as spheres, cylinders, and rectangular prisms. Please continue to help your child practice addition facts. Timed addition tests will begin in January. In Social Studies we are continuing our study of map skills and landforms. We will also discuss climate and weather and how they relate to regions of the country. In Problem Solving, we are learning the "make a table" strategy. Students will make and use tables and charts to organize data and solve mathematical questions.
Third Grade News January brings investigations of light and sound to third graders’ science classes. We will experiment with items such as tuning forks, observe the properties of light, and make many discoveries about vibrations , volume, and pitch. “Sounds” like fun! Social studies classes are moving to the topic of geography as students learn about landforms. Multiplication is the concept we’re focusing on in math. We continue to reinforce skills in adding and subtracting numbers with renaming and trading. Students in all classes practice math facts daily, and we congratulate those students working so hard at home towards mastery. Third graders continue to work on learning to write using cursive handwriting. Beginning in January students will be expected to write their weekly spelling words in cursive. Children will gain confidence and improve letter formation steadily if they are using cursive writing on a daily basis. Language classes have been working on writing meaningful sentences that contain rich descriptive language. Students continue to identify the subjects and predicates of sentences. Plural nouns and their various spelling patterns have been emphasized and third graders will be learning about possessive nouns. All classrooms will strive to provide children with opportunities to use laptop computers. Computers will be used for writing, as well as for utilizing the internet for academic activities. We encourage children to use computers at home as much as possible. Becoming familiar with the keyboard will be extremely helpful and Tiogue’s website alone provides many great links to math activities and other valuable resources. We congratulate our students who are a variety of wonderful literature on a nightly basis. As we near the midpoint of the second trimester, students are expected to have completed approximately twelve books. Many children are well on their way to June’s celebration of 25 completed books! Gr. 4 News Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and restful vacation. We thank all our families for their generous gifts and heartfelt holiday wishes! Here’s what is happening in grade 4: Reading: Please remember the children are responsible for reading 100 minutes per week. We suggest they read a variety of genres and complete at least 8 book completion forms per trimester. Math: We are all working on decimals (up to thousandths). The children are adding and subtracting them as well as ordering and comparing. Keep practicing those math facts! Problem Solving: We will continue with organized lists and follow up with the related strategy of tree diagram. Language: We have shifted gears into some expository writing. Our focus for this month is persuasive writing as well as grammar and convention skills. Science/Social Studies: As we await the arrival of our Earth Materials kit, we continue to look at regions of the United States. Please remember to review the agenda nightly with your child so you are aware of what they have for homework and are studying in school. We appreciate your support and look forward to a productive 2010.
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