Week of January 23rd

 Star student Wynter

Blue show and tell

Friday, January 27 Family literacy day, muffin morning 8:15 to 8:45. Dress up like a book character or wear clothes with print.

Monday, January 30th No school, teacher prep day.

Spelling skill - short I  big, bin, dill, dig, fill, fin, fit, him, his, kit, kiss, pin, rip, sit, tip, tin, win, will, zip, 

I was very impressed with our short e spelling test! Thank you for practicing with your child. During our agenda writing we are always talking about spelling rules and we've learned a lot. Have you heard of the FLOSS rule? Short vowel words that end in f, l, s, and z usually have a double letter: buff, stuff, stiff, ball, call, all, hall, bell, tell, shell, bill, hill, full, bull, doll, mess, kiss, boss, etc. It's English so there are always exceptions but it works most of the time.

We have talked about the word chunk 'ing' a lot and I will have at least one ing word on our test. We hear that word chunk at the end of lots of words! bing, ding, king, ring, sing, wing, etc.

We also know that words that end in the /r/ sound usually end in er. We will try one word that ends in er on the test. Winter, filler, sitter, lifter. I expect it to be hard but we will sound it out slowly. I would only study this if your child is confident with three letter (cvc) words. We talk about er often at school and most students know the rule even if they don't apply it all the time.

When I give the test, I support students by saying the word as a whole then saying it sound by sound. I remind them to listen to how many sounds they hear. When students are struggling, I will help them by sounding it out and counting out the sounds with them. A spelling test is only helpful when it supports learning and when the skills transfer to writing. Don't be discouraged by mistakes, usually I can see a pattern in the mistakes and I can address it as a class. Or we find time to work with small groups of students on specific concerns.

Math Please practice making tens with your child and counting by 2s, 5s and 10s. Do it in conversation when you have a moment. We have been playing Go Fish where we make ten rather than pairs. It's fun and we are learning too!