February Newsletter – Ms Soranson’s Class Hello Parents This month we are getting ready to share our learning at the March Portfolio Conferences. Students are again excited for you to see how much they have improved and their reflections on their learning. What perfect weather we had for our Field Day last Thursday. Check out this months photo gallery for pictures of your children having fun. As the weather is warming up please make sure that your child is dressed in layers so that they can undress and play. A water bottle for P.E is also important. Language Arts Small group reading continues to focus on reading strategies – with children making sure their words – look right, sound right and make sense. A new element is text fluency – reading in a smooth rather than choppy voice. Students will practice this skills each day in the small group setting. The children are learning more and more words that they can read and write in a Snap. The word work this month will use these words in different games such as Bingo, Find a word and make a sentence In Writing we continue with our Non-Fiction Writing theme and begin report writing. The students will call these All About books – where they will think of a topic that they know about and write facts about this topic. This ties in nicely with our Science – as students will be able to write about fish, snails and soon, worms. We continue to work on letter formation reviewing the letter and sound in our handwriting lessons. See over for some of our favorite books this past month I

Science – Animals 2 by 2 Our science investigations of 2 different animals still manages to hold the students attention. AS you can see from the pictures the class has been holding snails, watching snail races and comparing land and water snails. We also wait with great excitement for our land snail eggs to hatch. We have had an ongoing nursery in our room with our guppies giving birth and also our water snails. Portfolio Conferences will be a perfect opportunity to see our growing class’s growing animal kingdom

Our favorite books this month Henry & the Dragon Kite by Bruce Edward Hall Chopsticks by Jon Berkley COMING UP NEXT MONTH: Portfolio Conferences 12 th & 13 th March Spring Break March 25 th till April 7th Math Math continues to be hands on with students playing coin exchange or piggybank to learn about pennies, nickels and dimes. Students also begin thinking about fractions – with the introduction of ½, skip counting by 2s & 5s using the calculator and lots of work on 2 digit numbers. Graphing and surveys continue throughout the year. School Spirit Day Our Kindergarten class led the cheers for the TAS boys basketball team against Singapore. It was an exciting game to watch and the children really enjoyed being part of a whole school activity. GO TIGERS!!!