Winter Wows

So Winter has decided to arrive! We are staying cozy in our classroom, but are also warmed up to each other and our environment so serious learning has been well underway. In reading, we have been focusing on the authors' message by reading fables and picture books and asking, "What was the author trying to tell us?" We have been reviewing the short vowel sounds and digraphs in phonics. Letter blends and chunks have been another area of focus. We recently started our book recommendation wall and hopefully it will soon fill up with lots of ideas of books to share. Students report on the setting, characters and main idea when they make a recommendation to their peers. I would like to have the students blog about their favorite books to share at home sometime after the winter break. Perhaps some of the gift swap titles will surface there! Writing time has been filled with publishing conferences. Our class has had many pieces accepted by the literary board so keep your eyes peeled for our writings when you arrive or leave Lyman. We have been incorporating great beginnings into our new pieces by thinking of a sound, thought, question, action or dialogue. Standard spelling, phonetic spelling, punctuation, capitalization and slow motion stretching of words are also skills we are sharpening. When we include sequence in a piece of writing we are trying to include transition words as well as some description. Math has most recently been geometrically focused, but we have worked on addition, subtraction, place value and work with double and triple digit numbers. I really enjoyed meeting with each of you at conferences last week. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and questions with me. I hope this holiday season is your best yet!