Dear Parents,
I am looking forward to seeing the great memory posters that the students put together for their writing. The 1st grade has already shown so much growth in their ability to follow direction and in their enthusiasm for learning. I am excited to see what sort of ideas they will be coming up with to write about. In addition to having their own memory poster for brainstorming purposes I will be giving them other writing tools like a sound chart, traveling word wall, and a my favorite words book.
At the beginning of this year when I gave the 1st graders a writing assessment to see what they were capable of, many of the students let me know that they could not write. This idea of not being able to write is something we need to make sure to shake out of them. :) At home you can help by encouraging your child to write about something you did recently that he or she enjoyed. Even drawing a picture about it and then telling you about what he or she drew is being an author and he or she need to know that. By building his or her confidence up, the transition into real writing becomes more natural and your child will be much more excited about it. I often tell them when they don’t want to spell something out, “Just write down the sounds that you hear and I bet I can read it.” They usually get excited when I can. Or you can have them read it with you. J
To add on to the writing, this week I will be sending home the spelling sentences for the week that they will be tested on Friday. Please read the explanation about why I choose to use sentences instead of just having them spell the words. Also, we don’t want to have the 1st graders memorize the words we want them to be able to recognize the patterns in the words and be able to spell the words out. For example, the word families or patterns for this week are –at, -an, -ad. So you can also have your child practice spelling hat, dad, or pan etc. We want them to be able to sound out words, so the more words you expose them to the more practice they get using their phonetic skills. If you have any questions please blog or email. J
Have a wonderful week!
Sincerely,
Ms. Andrade
2 comments:
Christian was so excited when we finally finished his collage poster. He can't wait to go to school and share it with his classmates. It was fun doing it with Chris . I like the idea of starting our young kids to start writing at an early age. My husband and I look forward to read Christian's work from the collage we made.
Before we found out that you had the students start writing sentences and spelling out the words to how they "think" it is spelled like, I've noticed that she's writing notes here and there around the house. When I read the notes, the words that she's unfamiliar with she'll spell out as best as she could and I was still able to read it and know what she's trying to spell out.
My husband and I both think that it's a wonderful idea to have the kids start this way. She's been writing and writing everywhere she goes.
We also can't wait to see her writing from the her collage.
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