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Dear Parents,
Wondering what we've been doing??? Here's the scoop...
We had another great field trip last week to CNN, and the timing was perfect for our study of
the election and citizenship. When we vote on Tuesday at our MVPS "voting booth," I hope we
don't experience the long lines that other voters have had to deal with! First Grade has
graciously set up the booth, Kindergarten has supplied the ballots, and Second Grade (thanks to
Lindsay Griffin) will provide the "I Voted" stickers. Thanks, once more, to our chaperones; we
hope you enjoyed the trip as well, well,maybe not the escalator so much! Our next field trip
will be to the Atlanta History Center to view the Jim Henson exhibit and also the exhibit on
Native Americans in Early Georgia. The date is Friday, November 14, and we're hoping for a
beautiful fall day.
Reading and Language Arts:
We've been busy reading more stories in our Anthologies and will soon finish Unit 1. We will be
moving on to our unit on kindness, so this will dovetail nicely with Thanksgiving and the
Holidays. We will also use this opportunity to contribute to the Student Council Food Drive that
starts Monday, November 3. We are, as always, using our comprehension strategies in our stories--
We are continuing our work on predicting, making connections with other literature, summarizing,
visualizing, and asking questions, and other comprehension skills (comparison/contrast,
cause/effect, drawing conclusions).
We are constantly reviewing and using our Language Arts skills as we complete our Daily Oral
Language (DOL) and writing projects. During editing phases in our writing, we are checking for
all 5 parts that "make a sentence a sentence": Capital letter at the beginning, punctuation at
the end, a subject, a verb, and, of course, it has to make sense. Every day we implement these
rules as we work on our reading and writing.
Math:
We have just begun a new Unit and are proving to have mastered many of the concepts in it
already. Because of this, we will adjust our focus to those areas where we still need a little
practice: fact families, turnaround facts, number-grid puzzles (though we've just about mastered
those), and number stories. Though we are continuing with Mad Minute this year, we wanted to
make sure that you are also working on math facts/flash cards with your children. Though Mad
Minute is one strategy for remembering math facts, it is still important that children learn the
addition and subtraction facts to a level of automaticity, that is, they don't have to even
think about the answer once they look at the problem. It's almost like having an immediate
reflexive response. You can begin with the one's, two's, and three's, and then progress to the
higher numbers, in both addition and subtraction. You can make a race of it, setting a timer to
see how long it takes to get through the cards. You can even do it to show your child how it's
done! These simple computations provide your child with the foundation to understand and perform
multiplication and division more easily.
Social Studies and Science:
Over the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, we will focus on Social Studies. Our trip to the
Atlanta History Center will allow us a visit to the "Native Americans and Georgia" exhibit, and
our field trip to CNN also dovetailed nicely with our study of government, citizenship, and the
voting process.
On the Science front, we completed our measurement and estimation activities using our pumpkins.
Of course, we had to carve them up after we did our calculations, but now we have a greater
understanding of the concept of estimation and the tools needed to apply different facets of
measurement: weight, height, circumference, eyes, brains, hands, and number meaning.
We will continue to keep you updated on the focus of our learning and hope your children are
bringing home some information to share with you.
P.S. PHOTOS ARE BACK!!!! Though we were asked to remove photos of the children in our classes
from our webpage, we have posted some photos of our projects and activities...it's not as
interesting as having your children engaged in their learning, but at least a compromise...take
a peek.
Kathleen Braswell
Lindsay Griffin
Linda Kauffman
Melissa Rothbard
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