December Family Focus
December is an exciting time for students. Children's minds turn to family holiday traditions, celebrations, and the turning of a new year. As families celebrate the holidays in their home, we continue to celebrate the many academic milestones in the classroom.
Students continue to explore multiplication and division in Math class. Continue to practice multiplication facts each night. Families can use flash cards, dice, and other game models in addition to flash cards to practice and increase fact fluency. Students also have access to XTra Math with the sign-in information provided in their agenda books.
Reader's Workshop continues with students participating in read alouds as well as applying specific strategies introduced through our mini-lessons and practiced during independent reading. Students continue to develop their vocabulary, improve comprehension, and work on fluency. Focus strategies include predicting, inferring, making connections (text to self, text to text, text to world), asking questions, identifying the main idea and supporting details, and summarizing.
In Writer's Workshop the young authors are publishing their nonfiction text writing which includes several nonfiction text features we have studied. Students have worked diligently on their research for their state reports and are excited to share their final products. The published works will showcase students' abilities to synthesize their research, write for a specific purpose and over a sustained period of time, organize their information, write sequentially, and apply the syntax rules they learned in grammar. Students will also model their ability to add descriptions, and to compare and contrast with various subtopics they include.
Social Studies will continue with map skills as we learn about the five regions of the United States.
