McNitt Notes...

Little Bits of Weekend Work

In between all the fun festivities of Halloween, please have your child read through their story, The Frog Race, that came home Friday in their communicators. This is a story, along with many others, that we have exhausted in the classroom. 

Students read through stories individually, with a buddy, and sometimes in small groups where they apply learned phonics skills as reading strategies, increase their reading fluency and recall comprehension in written form.

The skills page that is tagging along is another practice page to reinforce the concept of using words appropriately with the added -ing suffix. In addition, all six sentences need quotation marks around what is being said. All punctuation and capitalization has already been inserted. Students need to only find the appropriate position for all sets of quotation marks. 

Please help your child to get this back into their communicators to return by Monday. Thank you!

Books!

Thank you to all students and families for donating books from our school book fair!! We are so appreciative and love the new book additions to our classroom library! THANK YOU!

Also, if any households are looking to get rid of any chapter books or picture books we would love to take those off your hands for our classroom library. Students are continuously shopping for new and interesting books. I would love more books for students to access. Thank you!

Westwoods Family Fun Night!

Westwoods family fun night at Incredible Mo’s is this 

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Please RSVP http://tinyurl.com/tcwwfamily if your family plans to attend

Conferences

Thank you to everyone who attended parent/teacher conferences last week and the week before! It was really great to see all of you again and to talk about your child's progress! It has been a really great year thus far with a great bunch of kiddos. We have a lot of new content, concepts, and curriculum to our classroom and learning, and they are doing a fantastic job taking it all in. Very proud of their progress and behavior, which makes it awesome to share with you all. Looking forward to what's ahead and the rest of the school year! 

Classroom Donations

Please checkout our Amazon Wish list for our classroom if you are looking to donate. The link is on the side of our blog site. You can also enter in McNitt Classroom to Amazon.com after clicking the wish list link.

We are also in need of Band Aids and Clorox Wipes. Winter season is coming with added germs and the beginning of flu season. We wipe down our desks and classroom areas everyday, which means we go through our disinfectant wipes quickly. 

Thank you for all your help and support!

HaLLoWEeN CeLEbRaTiON!!

Halloween Fun!!

 From treats and goodies...

to making a colored mask...

  to fun and games with musical tombstones, Halloween twister, and candy corn races!!

 Everyone was all smiles and full of excitement!! 

Happy Halloween!!

Six Minute Fluency

Six Minute Fluency is a program we began this week in the classroom. It is an added supplement to our reading block where students spend six minutes increasing their reading fluency through interactive, peer-to-peer repeated readings of high interest, leveled passages.  

Students are paired with a reading buddy, where they are reading informational text passages based on social studies and science content. This helps to enhance their background knowledge and content area vocabulary. Each set of partners are given a new passage each Monday to read for the week. Partners work together to track one anothers reading errors. To follow, they help each other solve errors, graph words read correctly within one minute, and visually see fluency growth on their graph throughout the week.

Their six minute fluency folders will be available for students to also use as reading practice during read to self and other book choice reading times.

Homework...

Spelling

Coming home today was a new homework packet. Involved students had a new list of spelling words. Through our lessons and readings this week the students will continue to add suffixes to root words. The added difference this week will be dropping the silent 'e' and adding the -ing. They will see the spelling words in different activities, readings and when they are writing. However, it is also important they practice their spelling words at home. This can be writing the words as someone says them, writing them in a sentence, drawing them in sand or rice, verbally spelling the words with a partner, etc. Spelling can be done at home or in the car. Something quick, so the students have constant recall on how to spell their words from a root word with an added suffix.

Reading Fluency

You will notice an additional page, Reading Fluency, was inserted into the students homework packets. Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly and with expression. With fluency practice each day, students will begin to read their short passage aloud effortlessly, grouping words quickly to help gain meaning from what they just read. Their reading sounds natural, as if they are speaking. 

On Friday, we will read the passages with a partner and to Mrs. McNitt.

Please let me know if you have any further questions on this.

Thank you!

McNitt Extras

NO POPCORN THIS FRIDAY!
Halloween Celebration

Friday, October 30th 1:25-2:25

We are all set on donations for our classroom! THANK YOU!!
Just a friendly reminder to all costumes coming in on Friday. Please make sure all costumes are appropriate for school. All small parts will be the students responsibility to keep track of. It would be a huge bummer is something was lost or broken to then not have a complete costume for the big trick or treating day on Halloween! If you do send in a costume, please make sure it is in a bag for safe keeping. Please let me know if you have any further questions or concern on this. Thank you for your understanding!
Also note, the book fair WILL be open for those who are slipping into parties in the building. You can make a quick stop in the library if you weren't able to before. 

Tuesday (10-27) and Thursday (10-29) are the next rounds of parent/teacher conference nights. I will send out another reminder for your scheduled time and date early next week. 

Looking forward to seeing and meeting everyone!

Westwoods library will have the book fair open until Friday, October 30th. It will be open during both parent/teacer conference nights. Students WILL also be able shop at their library time on this Monday (10-26). If students would like to purchase a book at this time they can. They are also able to shop on their lunch time if they would like throughout this week only.

Coin Day Challenge

October 26^th-30^th

Our school is participating in a coin-drive to support the All for Books program. To participate, simply send in any loose change you have on the appropriate day. Students can bring their loose change into the library and will receive a book slip, which will be displayed with their names in the library.Please take a moment to donate loose change to All for Books this year. On behalf of the students who will benefit- Thank You!

Penny Monday- donate your pennies
Nickel Tuesday- donate your nickels
Dime Wednesday- donate your dimes
Quarter Thursday- donate your quarters
Any Coin Friday- donate your coins to the All for Books program

"Quotation Marks"

We recently are learning the purpose and use of quotation marks. We see how it can changes our voice when we are reading, depending the character who is speaking in our stories. We practiced talking like other people if different tones. Of course we had a few laughs from that one. We also practiced how to use quotation marks in our writing when showing when a person or character is speaking.

Not only do students need to know the purpose of quotation marks, but they also learned how to implement quotation marks into their writing.

- after said there is a comma to pause before quotation marks

ex: Mike said, "I love school!"

- punctuation inside the quotation marks: 

Capital at the beginning of the sentence AND capitalize the first word in quotation marks

Punctuation before last quotation mark

Ask your child to show you. Can they write a sentence using quotation marks?

FrIDay!!

This week, and especially today, was a very busy, hugely productive, and an extremely awesome week!!

Students are ready for the weekend! 

Rest up kiddos...next week is going to be another big and exciting week!

Over the weekend...

Friday students brought home three different activities for the weekend...and then a couple extra days! 

I have asked students to return the following by Tuesday, October 27th: 

Show What You Know! From Johhny Appleseed

Knowing and identifying seperated diagraphs

Who Was Johnny Appleseed? 

Students need to read the article and respond their understanding with evidence. My expectation is that students write one complete sentence for each of the five questions. We have been learning how to develop a structured sentence. 

Call the COPS:

C - Capitalization

O - Organization

P - Puncuation

S - Spelling (Many of the sounds we have learned within our code books with different diagraphs, seperated diagraphs, tricky letters, tricky words, suffixes and our spelling rules. These should help and come to mind when solving a more challenging word to spell)  

Fluency Reading

We have read The Milk in the classroom individually, with our reading partners, and as a whole group. Now students are bringing it home to you!

Ask your child what makes this story a fable?

What does it mean to have a moral to the story?

* This does NOT need to come back to the classroom

Seperated diagraphs

When a magic e is added it changes the sound of the vowel. In class we have talked about seperated diagraphs

o_e makes the sound /oe/

i_e makes the sound /ie/

a_e makes the sound /ae/

u_e makes the sound /ue/

e_e makes the sound /ee/

Diagraph = two letters coming together to make one sound.

Ask your child, what makes a seperated diagraph?

They have shown their understanding of the seperated diagraph by horseshoing the letters in words with the magic e. Then use those words to complete the sentences.

Westwoods Fundraiser!

Stand up and Speak!!

Friday was our bully prevention assembly!

Stand up and speak up against bullying! 

Here are two videos made by other elementary schools that played a role in today's assembly.  

JFK Elementary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5twbtvfxUEI

Haine Elementary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVhzt3Iirfw

In the classroom, all students made a pledge and wrote an 'I will' action statement about what they will do to help. 

Incredible Mo's Family Fun Night

Westwoods Family Fun Night is a great way to connect with Westwoods families and support our amazing school. This night will raise money to support literacy in our school.  

More details will be released next week!

November 4, 2015

Adults $20

Kids (11 and under) $15

All prices include:

shoes

1 game of bowling

2 slices of pizza

soda

$10 arcade card

Bully Free!

WEAR BLUE FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23!

Bully Prevention Day!

Spelling: Suffix -ed

On Monday, students brought home their new spelling words within their weekly homework packet. Spelling words are root words with the added suffix -ed. All words are frequently used with our new readers Bedtime Tales, as well as with other connecting activities in our daily lessons. 

Students used their spelling words today, but looking at the root word and noticing if and when the word changed by adding the suffix -ed. 

Did it follow the three rules?

1. Short vowel sound

2. One syllable

3. One consonant at the end

Ask your child how and when a word changes when adding suffixes. 

Can they recall the three rules on whether to double a consonant?