Curriculum Newsletter
MS. BROOKS’ and MS. BURTT’S CLASSES
November
7, 2005
What We’re Working On:
We’ve added two new activities to our literacy time:
1)
Daily Revising and Editing practice.
The class is given two (or more) sentences to read and correct. The errors to be corrected relate to
the “Standard English Conventions” learning results. The children are correcting sentences for grammar and
punctuation. Some examples with
both grammar and punctuation errors are, “they is playing a game” and “me and
mary wants the ball” . We are
having lots of fun with this.
2)
Word Study - This is a developmental spelling program based upon the children’s
Individual Spelling Inventories, which we did this fall. The children in the three first and
second grade classes are working in five
different groups according to their learning needs:
The
children who are working with Mrs. O’Neil and Mrs. Johnson are working on
letter identification and consonants sounds. They are focusing on learning letter names and beginning to
hear and isolate the sounds in words.
They are working on what sounds they hear in the beginning, middle, and
end of a word. When children are
at this stage of spelling, we have them work more on the sounds that they hear,
then translate those sounds to writing letters. You need to be able to hear the /b/ sound before you know to
spell the word “bat”.
Children
working with Mrs. Chasse’ are able to spell words using beginning and ending
consonant sounds. Many of them
hear the vowels in the words, but are not yet able to distinguish between the
different vowel sounds. So they
might write “pat” for both pat and pet.
They are beginning to work on hearing short vowels in words. They are beginning by sorting pictures
of words with different middle
vowel sounds. It’s important that
they hear the sounds before they try to read and sort isolated words with
different vowels. This group will
also work on learning and using the consonant digraphs in their spelling. The digraphs are /sh/, /th/, /ch/. When you put s and h together, they make a totally different
sound than they do alone.
Children
who are working in Ms. Brooks’ group know some or all of their short vowel
sounds and use the digraphs most of the time. This group will do a quick review (and learning) of the
short vowel sounds and digraphs.
We’ll move into working with consonant blends. Consonant blends occur when two consonants are put together
in spelling a word; you can hear each sound separately, but they are blended
together as we speak or read the word.
An example would be the word swing. It is sometimes difficult for children to hear these blends
as they speak (sing/swing; cap/clap).
So we will work on picture sorts of words with and without blends; games
in which the children blend letters; and spelling “try-its” in which they
practice using these blends in spelling.
As the year progresses, this group will move into long vowel spelling
patterns. More about this
below.
Ms.
Burtt is working with children who are already able to represent short vowels,
digraphs, and consonant blends in their writing and who have begun to use long
vowel spelling patterns. This
group is beginning by using pictures sorts of short vowel and long vowel words, to make sure that they can
distinguish the long vowel sound.
After this, their work changes.
Where most of the other groups are working on hearing the sounds in the
words, and spelling those sounds as they hear them, the children working at
this level are beginning to look specifically at patterns in how they spell the
words. They will compare a short
vowel spelling pattern CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) to a long vowel pattern
CVCe (consonant-vowel-consonant -e).
So “hop” is CVC, whereas “hope” is CVCe. Then, they will need to look at other
long vowel spelling patterns and compare these. The long-a word “lake” follows a CVCe pattern, while the
word “rain” follows a CVVC
pattern. Other children in Ms.
Burtt’s group will be working on
more complex vowel spelling patterns and spelling patterns we see at the
“syllable juncture”.
Both
first and second grade students worked on story problems in math last
week. First grade students moved
from combining (addition) problems to separating (subtraction) problems. They also learned a new subtraction
game, invented by Mrs. Chasse’, Mrs. Johnson, and Mrs. Brown! Second grade students continued to work
on counting, grouping, and adding numbers by 2s, 5s, and 10s. Their homework for this week is “Making
Today’s Number “(45) using
multiples of 5. Then they moved
into working with combining story problems. We are placing an emphasis on being able to explain your
thinking, how you solved the problem.
If a child says, “I just knew it,” or “I used my brain,” then we are
asking them to tell us what it is that he or she “just knew” or “what were you
thinking in your brain?” At this
point, the children are using many different strategies to solve these
problems: breaking apart and combining numbers; number lines; 100s charts;
tallies. As the year progresses,
we’ll be asking them to focus more on which strategies are the most
efficient. Both first and second
grade students will be working with coins this week.
Second
grade students have finished their insect study. They have many booklets about insects to share with
you. They also did some very nice
work in computer class drawing insect life cycles: both complete and incomplete
metamorphosis. This week, we
completed the life cycle assessments; asking the children to describe the
difference between complete and incomplete metamorphosis. The children spent time reading
informational books about the forest habitat and learning about tree growth
(both rings and whorls).
They did some fantastic drawings of this in computer class. All of these drawings will be displayed
in the hallway, so that the children can share them with you during conference
time.
This
week, first grade students will be talking about the lives of pilgrim children
at Plimoth. Among the books we
read will be Sarah Morton’s Day, and Samuel Eaton’s Day. Sarah Morton and Samuel Eaton were
children who lived in Plimoth in 1627.
The books show photos of the actors at Plimoth Plantation who play these
children and other people who lived there in 1627. They tell about their lives, 17th century language. We’ll be comparing our lives to the
lives of the Pilgrims during this
time period. The children will be
bringing these books home to share with you over the long weekend. They’ll have a homework sheet to do in
which they compare their lives to the lives of Sarah Morton or Samuel
Eaton. As the first grade students
continue their Pilgrim study, second grade students will be spending some time
reading books about the lives of children “long ago”, but not quite so “long
ago” as the pilgrims. This is part
of the second grade Social Studies curriculum.
On November 16th, we will have a presentation by Fort Western museum staff on “The Pilgrims and Indians at Cushnoc”. The Pilgrims of Plimoth actually established a trading post at the native village of Cushnoc, somewhere near the present day Fort Western (in Augusta). Fort Western museum staff are coming to our first and second grade classrooms to teach us more about life at the trading post in the early 1600s. We’d like to thank the PTO for financing this visit.