By Amy McBeath | Posted: Thursday January 30, 2020
This newsletter will outline some of the things that you can expect to see happening in Room 6, as well as some ideas for home.
We've begun our year by finding out some information about each other through discussions, graphs, and writing. We have also been creating some classroom displays to brighten up the room. Regular classroom routines will begin in the next couple of weeks.
Things that you could be doing at home:
Conversations
Taking time to talk with your children and to develop learning conversations with them is time well spent.
These conversations help parents and children to further develop relationships and share understandings. We want parents and children to enjoy talking together and learning from each other.
Inquiry learning at home
We hope that all children will be fascinated and curious about things in their world and want to learn more about topics that interest them. Some children will have particular interests that they will choose to investigate at home and bring to school to share.
Reading
Children should do some reading each night. The books may be from a selection in the classroom, from the library, or from home. Children may bring books home once we start our regular classroom routines in Week 3. Our class will visit the library on a Monday and a Thursday (once the new library is set up).
At this level we are aiming to create a love of reading and help children become independent readers. Selecting books for themselves is part of this independent process.
Sometimes children may select a book which interests them, but where the text may be too difficult for them to read independently. If this happens, parents may like to read the book out loud, discussing the text and pictures together.
Spelling
Children will be given a spelling sheet by the end of week three with lists of words to learn at home. There will be tests on these words at school each Friday.
Mathematics
The person who does the thinking does the learning.
It is our aim to encourage children to think mathematically and look at things in the world around them with mathematical interest and wonder. This could happen anywhere e.g. at home in the kitchen, in the garden, while travelling in the car. Topics for mathematical conversations could include observing patterns and shapes, grouping objects and numbers, estimating or measuring length and weight, working with time, reading charts and graphs, predicting events, working with money, or banking.
Children who are able to engage in mathematical conversations are lucky children indeed.
It is important that children work to learn their basic facts of addition and subtraction. This knowledge allows children to use a wider range of strategies more easily. Mathletics and Xtra Math are useful online tools that can help with this. More information will come home about these in the next couple of weeks.