November 12, 2007

Dear Best Buddies,

    Thank you for reading with your child at home. You are helping them become  life long readers! To reinforce what I'm doing at school, stop your child after a page or paragraph and discuss what has just occurred in the text."What does that make you think of?" "What do you think the author is trying to say?"How did you know what that word meant, or did you know what that word meant?" These are questions that good readers answer automatically to themselves. This will also give you some insight into what your child is thinking during reading. Your child may mention "schema". It means, background knowledge. Readers activate schema before, during and after reading. Readers use schema to make connectionsbetween the text  ansd their lives, between one text and another text, and between text and the world.

Why should students read aloud? You may think," They know how to read, let them read silently." Research is saying that practicing reading aloud allows the reader to slow down and digest what he or she is reading, thus it increases comprehension. They still need to hear you read out loud to them to have proper models.

Speaking of Reading Aloud...Tomorrow night, November 13, 2007 is America's Biggest Bedtime Story. This correlates with our Book it Program.( October Pizza Hut tickets will be sent home today) John Lithgow will read The Remarkable Farkle McBride.

Just go to www.bookitprogram.com on November 13 beginning at 4:00 p.m. CST( viewable all night long) Please be prepared to answer some simple questions about the reading on November 14, 2007. These answers will be our chance to win some  great prizes!

Individual spelling practice  is coming home. Please use the "Words to Study" as a guide to help your child with these words. Point out these words in different reading material for your child to identify. As you can see, this is a spiral program and these words will be seen again and again. That is neat thing about Sitton Spelling. There is no one testing of the words. The students know the words when they can use them correctly in their writing.

Writing letters home has been a wonderful experience for the students. I hope you can see the conncetion this is making between home and school. What a life skill! I may have to start this with my 14 and 16 year olds! Would they be as honest as second graders? I do try to help edit  the letters but may overlook some mistakes. I expect all writing to have capitals at the begining of a sentence and correct punctuation at the end. All short vowel words should be spelled corectly as well as words with silent "e".

In math we are continuing to practice addition and subtraction  facts to 20. Research shows that knowing your facts helps with all math operations. Our focus will be on using facts to help solve problems. This is promoting real life skills. The next time you're out at a resturant with your family, have your child solve problems on paper that you dictate. "There were thirty-seven elephants drinking chocolate milk. Some of the elephants stayed.  Twenty-nine left with a tummy ache. How can we find out how many elephants stayed to drink?" Let your child write the information that was given down, and then subtract. Remind them of our Rap Song- " More on top, no need to stop. More on the floor, go next door, get ten more....numbers the same, zero's the game!

Please dress your child appropriately for the morning weather. We never know when we may have a fire drill and have to stand outside.

I look forward to seeing some of you at our Thanksgiving Meal on Thursday, November 15, 2007.

Kind Regards,

Deanna Beaver

P.S.

Congratulations to Richard! I drew his name and was able to ride his bus last week. It was neat seeing the children's faces when they recognized that a teacher was aboard!

Also, Congratualtions to Leah for being our Chacter Word of the Month- Responsibility.