One Hundred-Twenty-First Day

Everyone should have a copy of their second-period progress report. A new reading log went home today. We have a full week of testing activities this coming week.

Sixty-First Day

Tying up many loose ends this week. Our second reading skills battery is complete but for a few make-ups. Generally speaking half of the class's fluency scores decreased as I had predicted and half improved. Those whose scores decreased did not have much buffer for a lower score and will likely be receiving unsatisfactory notices in the next notification cycle. The tests increase in difficulty each period and are administered every six weeks. The bottom line is some children just need to spend more time reading. Luckily, almost everyone passed the word reading and spelling portion of the test. Tomorrow I will send home certificates of accomplishment for those satisfying the 1st grade reading fluency goal. I will send home certificates each time we take the battery to those who pass and who have not yet received a certificate. As I stated at Back-to-School, those that are passing the test and making the district goal at this point in the year are likely not to slip below a rubric score of 3 for the year and likely not to the following years either. High score fluency was 130 WPM low score was 8 WPM.

We told time to the half hour today and will continue for homework. You should find your child's 1st quarter progress report in their folder as well as a schedule for Thursday's performance.

Thirtieth Day

Nine reports are now completed and only one left to do seminar. Today we blended through the /j/ sound spelled 'j' and "short vowel, dge". We worked on our third thinking map: bubble map. The topic of our map was ourselves. The main idea is to describe yourself using 6 (or more) adjectives. This map is good for developing sensory detail in writing. Obviously we had to discuss and define the term 'adjective'.

We will be beginning a new unit on Monday as well as beginning our first reading tests. This next unit's topic will be workers in our neighborhood. We will be moving through the writing process again and completing a report on a worker of our choice.

In math we discussed word problems involving subtraction. There is no homework.

Congratulations to table 2 for beating the standard of 75 grams. Successful completion of a dictation exercise pushed them over the requirement. Next week's goal will be 80 grams.