Rituals and Routines

Wow! It was so great to see so many family members and special friends at our Open House. Your support is greatly appreciated!
These first few weeks, we've been hard at work mastering the "rituals and routines" for our Reader's and Writer's Workshops. Next week, we will begin more formal assessments on individual students. This will enable us to effectively place each child in the appropriate (leveled) skills group/ guided reading group. Small group instruction, along with one-on-one teacher conferencing, will happen daily in our class. We all have areas of strength and we all have room to grow!
By now, your child should be able to tell you about expectations for behaviors during teacher "read alouds" and routines for "shared reading." We have also learned about choosing books for independent reading... each child's class "book bag" should include books from different genres. We are also practicing talking about books respectfully and purposefully ("accountable talk"). Finally, we've had a chance to try out "partner reading" and writing about our feelings/ reactions to a text in our Reader's Response Journals. The Snapdragons have been busy!
Your child also has a folder designated "25 books!"...this is where we record ALL reading completed throughout the day. (These logs require a very brief entry.) This folder should go home every night. Students should complete at least 15 minutes of "after school" reading daily (Monday-Thursday). Please initial this log each night so that your child gets credit for this homework assignment. We want everyone to reach the "25 book" goal this year.
Writer's Workshop has gotten off to a great start as well...We have created our "Source Books" (a place to keep inspiration and ideas) and we've begun working toward the narrative standard. On Thursday, we talked about "engaging beginnings" and looked at examples of good "grabbers"from some of our class read alouds. Through reading, we can improve our writing skills.Please encourage your child to discuss Reader's and Writer's Workshop with you at home.

Reminder: Scholastic Book Orders were sent home this week... this is a great way to purchase fun and quality literature at a very reasonable price. We also earn points to build our class library with each order! (Orders are due by Friday, September 12.)

Thank you again for helping to make our Open House a success! We are looking forward to working with each family this year...