Wonderful Wordsmiths

This week we officially began our word study routine and your student should be practicing these routines at home with you three nights a week. Looking at words by their sound pattern has been proven to help students develop the type of phonic awareness that will help them as writers, but also as readers. As they move along the developmental continuum, students will begin to look at base words, roots, suffixes, and prefixes and knowledge about this type of morphology helps readers to attack more complex text. As your student is sorting he/she shouldn't just be focused on getting it in the "right column", rather they should be mindful of sound/symbol relationships and most importantly the meaning(s) of words.  We then work as a group of spellers to reflect on how we can use this information to help us as readers and spellers.

Colby gets a magnified view of a Wolf Spider!

This past week in math has been full of "A-ha" moments as students have been investigating many new vocabulary words like prime, composite, factor, multiple, area model, dimension, and commutative property of multiplication. Have them wow you at the dinner table with some of their new understandings. Many of the concepts that were marked with IDKY (I Don't Know Yet) on our Pre-Assessment have become a bit more clear with some of our hands on activities through the week.

We also had our first Four Winds lesson where students learned about the fascinating lives of spiders. We got to look up close at these amazing creatures and several students who felt quite frightened by them at the start of the morning admitted that their fears had been quelled by the new information. Here are some photos to enjoy.

Navigating new vocabulary with the parts of a spider

Please feel free to sign up for a Fall Conference Date using the links on the sidebar under Important Dates. There is a link for both Mrs. Parker and Mrs. Eaton. Also, just a reminder that we do not have school this Wednesday, September 23rd.

Comparing spider species

Happy Fall,
Jess and Liz