A few IMPORTANT notes about homework:
1.
Homework is a review. What I send home is what we have already
covered each week. If your child needs
much assistance with the homework, please let me know that as they should
mostly be able to do this work independently.
2.
Reading, beginning in October, will be done
nightly. There will be a goal of minutes
read for the month. Each month the total
minutes will go up. Without reading
nightly, reading cannot improve. This
reading should mostly consist of your child reading to you. If you would like
to read to your child that will help their reading too, but please be sure that
they are reading to you at least 4
nights a week. Please talk about what is read. Comprehension is KEY to success.
Reading isn’t fun if we don’t think about and understand what we read.
3.
I want your child to be able to be a kid. I want them to play games, run around, and be
involved.
4.
If you would like more homework, please have
your child keep a reading journal. Have
them write the title, author, and then write about what they read. It could be a summary, a retelling using
beginning, middle, and end or first, then, next, and last as they retell
it. You could have them talk about the
setting or the characters. They could
connect to books they have already read and events that have happened in their
lives. The key to this connecting is to
talk about specific things that happened in the book and not just talking about
the book in general.
5.
There will be spelling words every week. The tests will be on Fridays. These words
need to be not just learned for the test but remembered and used in their
writing correctly.
6.
Today, sight word “cards” are coming home. The ones that are marked are the ones that
your child knows. To know a word they
must instantly be able to say the word.
If they have to think about it or sound it out, it is not counted as
being “known”. The reason for this is because they are sight words. They are commonly seen in reading. If you have to stop to think about each word
you see, you cannot focus on understanding what you read. When your child knows a page or two, send
them back in and I will check in with them. (This may take a day or two.) The
ones they know instantly, we will put a sticker next to it. When this whole set of cards is known, we
will move on to the next set. This is
the first 100 words. We need to make it
through 300 words this year. The goal is
for this set to be known by the end of September. That is soon.
Some are going to make it…some will keep working. We work with these words in class also!
7.
Please let me know if you ever have any
questions!
