Happy New Year!

 Friday, January 12, 2024


Happy New Year!  What a way to start the new year with a week of freezing cold weather! 


Looking Back


We started off 2024 by leveling up to a new kind of phonics learning called UFLI. Our literacy time consists of many routines which we are already experts at so moving into our new UFLI phonics learning has been an easy transition and very fun! During UFLI time, students learn and practice new phonics skills daily as well as continuing to learn high-frequency irregular words (heart words). We practice reading and writing decodable text and work hard to build our skills. This week, we reviewed the short vowel sounds daily and practiced reading words with a consonant cluster (or blend - e.g. pl, gr, st) at the beginning or end of the word. Today you will see 2 decodable passages in your child’s ziplock bag as well as a game to practice reading decodable words. They have practiced reading these passages at school this week and illustrated them to show their understanding. Please read the passages with them over the weekend.


We read a story called “Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution” this week. We talked about making a goal to get better at something or help someone. We each thought about what our goal will be and wrote it in a sentence. We did a detailed picture to go with our sentence. Our final step was to turn our work into ourselves holding our goal. We had so much fun with this project that we hung our “New Year’s People” up outside our classroom. We will bring them home to show you one day.


In Math, we reviewed and practiced skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s this week. We learned song called the “Skip Count Song.” Ask your child if they can sing it for you. We are becoming better at skip counting everyday (we have been doing it since the beginning of grade one). A great time to practice skip counting is in the car or on a walk. This would be a great time to check in with your child to see how their skip counting is coming along (by 2s to 20, by 5s to 50 and by 10s to 100). We read a story called “Billions of Bricks” which showed how a group of builders used skip counting to organize their bricks in a faster way. We solved a skip counting problem with a partner. Students had to count out 50 things (not by ones!) and arrange them in a way that was easy to count. We took pictures of our ideas and talked about the ways that worked and why.


In Science, we (no surprise here) talked about the season of winter and drew and labeled pictures of the clothing we need to wear in the winter weather. 


Looking ahead


No school on Monday January 15 as it is a PD day.


Please return all library books for Tuesday book exchange.


Although the weather looks a little bit better next week, please ensure your child is bundled up to go outside everyday. We will head out if the weather is any warmer than -20 degrees.


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