Closed-Syllable Words

In our phonics work we have been identifying and marking closed-syllable words lately. Closed-syllable words have exactly one vowel, and it is "closed in" with at least one consonant at the end, which means the vowel sound is short. (Every type of word we've learned to spell so far this year (other than trick words) has been a one-syllable, closed-syllable word, but now we know what they are and know how to mark them.) This will prepare us to learn about and spell another syllable type soon...

Stained Glass Flowers

As part of our study of sound and light in science, we have learned the words transparent, translucent, and opaque. We made "stained glass" flowers, which are translucent and are very pretty right now in our small classroom windows!

Book Reviews

We are finishing up our writing workshop unit on reviews. We have finished up by writing and revising a book review. We learned how to write a catchy introduction, how to say our opinion, give reasons for our opinion, and how to write a good ending. After all this we watched this Reading Rainbow book review of the book Jumanji to help us get the idea of giving a good convincing, oral book review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQG6AR5diPw

We noticed the boy in this video talks in a loud, clear voice, speaks in an excited way, as well as giving a sneak peek about the story without saying too much-- and other things we had already done in our writing! We are now reading our book reviews aloud in class*, inspired by that great example. 

*We had such fun making "audio books" and sharing them with you recently, that I will try to also email you the video of your child's book review sometime over the next several school days.

Parent-teacher conferences coming up...

Dear parents,

I just emailed out this link for you to sign up for a spring conference time. I am trying a new method for conference sign-up this time, to eliminate paper and confusion. Thanks for trying it out. Let me know if it doesn't work for you, AND let me know if none of these times work and we will find another. Thank you!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oX8e8HQZ3fdo56PeoBFnuA2r75NYtBFa6dypOEwFjrc/edit?usp=sharing