Well, we've survived the first two weeks of school! These two weeks have been absolutely crazy! The kiddos are doing a great job adjusting to a new building, new teachers, and a new routine. They've been tested to death, especially in my class, but they are troopers. We are all looking forward to getting into a somewhat normal routine beginning next week.
In language arts this week, the kids took a standardized reading and writing test. These tests are scored by our testing team and compared to the results from the end of the year first grade tests. We then use these scores to determine placements for Title 1 Reading and Ohio Reads. It also gives me an idea of what the kids will need a lot of help with this year and what they already know.
We also spent some time talking about R.A.P. This is a test-taking, question-answering strategy that we will be spending a LOT of time talking about this year. R.A.P. stands for repeat, answer, and prove. It encourages the students to answer short-answer and extended response questions using complete sentences in order to obtain the maximum number of points on a test. The students will continue to use this strategy throughout their time at Lake Elementary.
The kids worked really hard on a Readers' Theater performance this week as well. They practiced in small groups for three days and then performed for the class on Friday. Our goal with the Readers' Theater is to encourage and practice fluent reading (reading that sounds like speaking - not too fast and not too slow) with expression (showing the character's emotions). The kids did a great job with these. They not only practiced, but they also worked to create a poster of scenery that we hung behind them as they performed their scripts.
Next week we will begin our first unit from the Storytown reading textbook. We will be reading a story called Arthur's Reading Race and talking about characters. The kids will be learning about sentences in grammar and writing sentences about a picture. Spelling words were sent home on Friday and consist of 15 words with the short a or short i sound and 5 sight words. This week's words are: flag, fin, ran, has, fill, sat, list, sit, bag, win, picnic, plastic, rabbit, fabric, napkin, over, new, sound, take, only
Please note that spelling tests are on Thursdays!
Our specials schedule for next week is:
Monday - no school
Tuesday - computer
Wednesday - art
Thursday - music
Friday - gym
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