Class Update 8/29

Dear Parents,

A NEW Homework Policy

After many months of studying and discussing the effectiveness of homework in younger grades with colleagues and administrators, I am making some changes in my homework policy. Studies and personal experience show that an excessive amount of homework in the younger grades is not beneficial and can even be detrimental to a child’s attitude toward school and family relationships. For this purpose, I require only that your child read 20-30 minutes each night and sign the weekly reading minutes calendar in the homework folder. 

I would love if my students spent their evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success (we call this Sharpening the Saw). Eat dinner as a family, read together, take a trip to the library, play outside and help your child get to bed early.

Math practice pages, spelling, or reading passages will be sent as a form of communication or optional practice if you feel your child personally needs it in these areas.

On occasion students may be assigned a project for work outside class. In this case, instructions will be sent accordingly and ample time will be given for the project. The purpose will be for a student to work together with his or her family to discover information or present something they have learned together. These projects will be meant to enrich learning that is being done at school.

THIS WEEK AT A GLANCE

Math Lessons: We are focusing on adding and subtracting within 1,000. We will continue to practice rounding to the nearest 10 and 100.

Spanish Literacy: We are practicing speaking and writing in complete sentences. The lesson’s big idea is on how we accomplish goals and our grammatical focus continues to be masculine article: el. Phonics focus: plural endings s, es, ces.

Spelling: Spellings groups began with a slow start today, but we finished. Your child has a spelling sort that they can practice at home this week. Again, this practice is optional. The goal is to take spelling tests on Fridays. The first one will be this Friday, September 2nd.

Reading: We began our first official unit called Learning Helps Us Grow. We will be practicing reading to find explicit information from a text and looking for clues that indicate different text genres.

Writing: Students will be decoding a writing prompt by finding the question that is being asked of them and restating it.

7 Habits: Our focus this month is Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind – writing personal mission statements.

I hope you all have a great week!

Sra. Reyes