Writing Workshop January/February

      
The children continue to build on their story language by talking during weekend news and are starting to become storytellers. Students are getting their thoughts down on paper through pictures, labels, and letters and now words.

             In this unit children will learn how to write about about a particular moment --- one that matters most. Through a combination of drawing and writing, the emphasis will now be about a single event, telling about that event in order and providing a reaction to it.

            Please help your child create and think about small moment stories. Visit places and do as many things with your child, which will then help them when writing.

            The emphasis in this unit will be on writing complete sentences that match the pictures students draw, writing known words and hearing and recording sounds in sequence , and using proper spacing between words.

     The unit will end with a celebration of student growth!!!!

January Word Study

As we come to the end of learning the letters of the alphabet and the sounds each letter makes, we will begin to work on phonemic awareness skills, including both reading and writing CVC words (.  In these upcoming word study units, we will start to tune the students into the separate sounds, or phonemes in a word.  We will also work on rhyming words and blending sounds to form words. 

By mid January,  students will learn how to blend and read three-sound short vowel words.  These words are called CVC words.  This means a word has a consonant, followed by a vowel, followed by a consonant (for example: map, sat, lip, wet, hop, cup, Bob, Tim).  They will also have a chance to practice writing these the words in lowercase print or including a capital in the beginning if it’s a name.

A new strategy that will be introduced will be the “tapping out” way.  This is a way for students to hear the separate sounds in words as they tap the sounds separate on their fingers.  They use their thumb to tap the pointer, middle and ring finger for making a word.  Then they sweep across fingers to say the entire word.

For example:              bat            b-thumb taps the pointer finger

                                                            a-thumb taps the middle finger

                                                            t-thumb taps the ring finger

**then sweep thumb across all the fingers that were tapped and say the word aloud

Check out this video showing what tapping looks like: TAPPING OUT WORDS

We will also continue to work on sight words throughout the year.

Important Dates...

January 4- Students return to school!

January 18- NO SCHOOL for Martin Luther King Jr.

January 23- (Saturday) KIDS GO GREEN event 11:30-12:30

January 29-  Parents as Learning Partners 8:40

January Read-Aloud

 Mo Willems Author Study...

excited

relieved

helpful/unselfish

optimist/always look on the bright side

pessimist/negative

persistant/determined

stubborn

We will also learn about Martin Luther King...

leader