November 30, 2009
Dear Parents,
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving Break! I know it was great to see family and spend some relaxing time with my husband and kids!
We will be jumping right back into our routine this week. As I mentioned in last weeks’ Monday note, our homework routine will change this week.
On Monday’s and Wednesday’s there will be an extra sheet of reading that will come home for you to help your child with their fluency. This sheet will only take about 3 to 4 minutes to do. It will be a passage for your child to read and they will need to be timed. Give them only 1 minute to read. Tell them they need to read as many words as they can. Wait about 3 seconds before giving them a word they do not know. Mark out the errors (words they don’t read correctly) and when the timer stops, put a bracket around or circle the last word read to show where they stopped. Count the number of words read correctly in 1 minute. Record that number in the place provided at the top of the sheet and repeat this 2 times. Then return the paper in their homework folder so that I can look over it. This is considered part of their homework.
Sometime before Christmas Break the children will be tested on their fluency as part of the DIBELS test. To benchmark the children will need to read at least 20 words in 1 minute. So I want the children to be prepared for this testing. We also work on this in class so it won’t be new to the children to do it at home with you. Thank you for your help as we prepare for this next step in our reading process.
In Math this week we will be using greater than, less than and equal to symbols to compare numbers, ordering numbers on a number line and counting forward and backward. There will be math homework ONLY on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s.
I hope everyone has a great week! Don’t forget to send a coat with your child everyday. Weather permitting we will go outside for recess. J
Kendra Woods