Fridays in the resource room consist of a lot of assessment and progress monitoring of students' progress towards their IEP goals and other foundational academic skills. To offset this sometimes demanding time, students have the opportunity to participate in "Fine Motor Friday" after they've completed their progress monitoring and assessment tasks with me. Fine motor, as well as gross motor, abilities are areas that many students benefit from targeted exercise in. For students that see an OT or PT, either in the school setting and/or outside setting, this is a particularly important skill area for development. Even if students don't receive therapy in these areas, they are still of significant importance for development at the primary age level. Our Fine Motor Friday activities give students a chance to practice and strengthen these important skills and often compliment targeted areas within students' IEPs. For the past few Fridays we've been learning about the Summer Olympics. Last Friday, we wrapped up this unit in honor of the Summer Olympics coming to a close. Students read about Gymnastic and Equestrian events in the Olympics, answered comprehension questions about what they read, and then had the opportunity to connect their experience in learning about the Olympics with a goal-setting writing activity to help them set goals and make a plan for reaching these goals. To incorporate fine and gross motor skill work, students practiced walking on a balance beam course (tape on the floor) and then designed their own champion medals for completing the Olympic unit. In math, students were challenged to become engineers and exercise their fine motor and problem-solving abilities. Students were provided marshmallows and toothpicks and instructed to design the tallest structure they could. Students experimented first independently and then used this experience to engineer a tower by working together. They practiced counting their materials, discussing the shape and shape descriptors of their foundation, and measuring their constructions. Students were given opportunities to refine their designs and discuss with each their strengths and challenges in completing this task. A number of valuable math vocabulary terms came up during our application and following discussion, such as solid, height, length, measure, inches, centimeters, tall, wide, side/corner/edge, etc. Students practiced teamwork and problem-solving skills throughout the entire process.
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Welcome back students and parents! I am so excited to begin another exciting and learning-filled year!
This year I will be tweaking some of our routines to make them more efficient and effective for your child. We will still do Class Dojo this year, which will continue to be an excellent way to check on your child's progress throughout the day, as well as communicate with me in an easy format. Of course, always feel free to contact me by email or telephone at the school, as well. One routine that will be tweaked this year is the format of the homework I assign. I will be incorporating Homework Menus on a monthly basis, which are experience-based tasks that focus on fine motor, gross motor, and social-emotional skills. Learn more about that HERE. Additionally, you may hear your child speak of "brag tags" in Mrs. Vining's room! I'm excited to incorporate this new incentive to recognize truly outstanding behavior your child shows; whether its in academics, social skills, or an important milestone they've completed. Finally, we will have a new assistant working in our classroom this year, Mr. James Constant. I look forward to introducing him on our class website soon! As always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions you have. I look forward to seeing you at Open House on August 4th! Welcome back! I hope you've enjoyed your winter break. I think its given us all a chance to reset and recharge for the last half of the school year. I know I for one am ready to get back in the classroom and back to our routine! Since half the year is now behind us, we are going to be changing gears and increasing the rigor of our classwork so that we can begin to prepare your future first/second/third graders. The end of the school year will be upon us before we know it! We will start by implementing homework again right away. The focus of homework from my room will now be solely reading-based, although it is always excellent to practice and review those math and writing skills as well. I know your time at home is valuable and I know students' energy is nearly drained after working hard at school all day. So I take these things into consideration when I pull homework activities for you to work on with your child. All activities are directly related to what we are working on during the week within my classroom. They all are focused on important reading skills your child should practice in order to become a more fluent and confident reader. One activity I want to specifically touch on is the new Sight Word Mastery booklet your child will be using. Your child will keep their booklet in their homework pouch. They should be sure to bring it back each Friday for assessment and tracking of their sight words. This is what you can expect the booklets to look like: Each booklet contains a set of Fry's 100 sight words. Your students will progress through each set as they show mastery. Each booklet is broken down into 10 sub-lists. Students should focus on one list at a time; as they show mastery, they will move on to the next list (1-10). Once mastery is shown on all ten lists in the booklet, they will be ready to move onto a new booklet with a new and more challenging set of sight words. The booklets not only have lists of words, but phrases for each word on the back of each page. Students can use these phrases to practice reading the sight words fluently. Each Friday, I will assess students using this booklet. For each list the student shows mastery with, they will earn a sticker on the front cover. This is a great motivator for students, as well as a great visual tool for students to see their progress.
If you have any questions about the activities sent home, as always, please feel free to contact me. I look forward to the rest of the school year with your child and I appreciate your continued support and communication! It's been a very busy but successful start to this school year! We've been hard at work since August, becoming better readers, writers, and mathematicians. I hope you are as proud of your student as I am! A quick update about the new behavior management system we are using in the classroom: Classroom Dojo. We've tested it out for a few weeks now and both I and the kids are loving it, so its here to stay! Let me explain how it works. Students can earn or lose points throughout the day, both in my classroom and in their general education classroom, based on their behaviors and choices they make. For example, they can earn points for completing all of their work at each writing/reading/math station, working hard, helping a friend, participating and staying on task, etc. Or, they may lose points for not following directions, being disrespectful, not being prepared, off task behavior, etc. What I love about this system is that students are so excited about it and engaged with it. What I love even more is that students realize the exact behavior that earns or loses them points, thus reinforcing positive choices and bringing awareness to the not so positive choices. What I love the most, however, is that YOU can be directly involved in this program. If you haven't already, you can join and monitor your child's behavior throughout the day. You can be notified by email/text message when your child earns or loses points. You can also see reports that break down the frequency of positive and negative behaviors recorded through the system. The messaging service provided through the program allows for a line of communication between you and I that I have found to be so beneficial to keeping everyone informed and up to date on what is happening in the classroom. I hope to begin sending pictures to you of what we are doing in the classroom. The goal is to help you feel as involved as possible in your child's education. As always, if you have any questions, or if you need help getting started with following our Classroom Dojo, please reach out to me and let me know. Wishing you and your family and happy and healthy Thanksgiving holiday! Mrs. Vining We've had an excellent week getting into the groove of school and establishing a routine in the classroom. I would like to just provide a reminder about homework. If your child visits my room for resource time (reading/math), they will be assigned a homework folder that will go home each Monday with the homework of the week. This homework is due back by Friday for a grade. If your child does not return the homework, or if it is incomplete, this will be affected in your child's grade for either reading or math.
I know after a long school day, homework can sometimes be difficult to complete at night. Here are some strategies that I hope will help you and your child in the homework process:
I hope this helps ease the homework process. Also, take advantage of the tools provided on the homework folder. For a description, refer to the homework tab HERE. For extra practice, take advantage of the resources suggested on the homework tab. There you will find links to excellent resources your child should be familiar with from school. As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns! We have officially conquered the first week of school! I hope your child is still as excited about coming to school each day as they were on the first day, just one short week ago. This week we have worked a lot on establishing routines and reviewing important concepts. This is so important in order to build new skills throughout this school year. We are all now beginning to really delve into the learning process and crank up the rigor. Next week in my resource room, we will begin our guided reading groups and math rotations. I will also be sending homework home beginning on Monday. As a reminder, homework will target the current skills we are working on in my room, as well as skills your child may need extra practice with. Refer to the Homework tab on this website for a look into the homework folder and more of what to expect.
Please feel free to take a look around our classroom website and check back frequently for updates about the learning that takes place within our classroom. As always, feel free to contact me with any comments, questions, or concerns you may have. |
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September 2016
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