Week 7

Everything is happening this week. Parent Teacher Conferences, Reading Groups start Monday, our centers will have to be ready by tomorrow morning, new spelling list, more vocabulary, new writing assignment and lessons, plus at some point in the next three weeks we will be working with GPS units (more about that later).

Daily Grams: Why do I place such an emphasis on learning the language?

I thought it might be helpful for you as parents to know what we do everyday. I will start with an example of our Daily Grams. We do this every morning first thing when we sit down as the students wait for the school announcements, and I take attendance. I feel that the English language needs to be practiced and used so we can understand it better and utilize its tools in our reading and writing. This week I have outlined basically what the students will see on their Daily Grams. For example, a recent assignment had the following:

1. A part of a friendly letter, (Dear John,)
2. exclamation marks in sentences, (Wow! We did it!)
3. Sentence Types (Give your sister a pencil. - is an example of a command).
4. the use of pronouns (Me and Garret or Garret and I went home.) , and
5. Combining two subjects into a compound subject. (Kiora ran in a race. Kauri also ran in a race. = Kiora and Kauri ran in a race).

Daily Grams and the parts of the grammar that are emphasized each day also correlate with the new common core http://www.corestandards.org/ The Language Standards - Grade-3: L.3.2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

1. Capitalization (part of a friendly note, proper nouns, do not capitalize plants or animals, Titles).
2. Punctuation (Exclamations, Initials, Comma after town, Possessive nouns, Abbreviations).
3. Parts of Speech and Sentence Structure
   
   • A. Sentence Types (statement, question, command).
   • B. Adjectives describe, and they often tell what kind
   • C. Prefixes / Roots / Suffixes - Some words are made by adding a prefix before the main word (root). Example: bicycle
   • D. Subject of a sentence tells who or what the sentence is about. The verb often shows action.
4. More Parts of Speech and Sentence Structure
   • A. Pronouns take the place of nouns (Use I as the subject of a sentence).
   • B. Nouns (plural nouns, most words add s, however add es to words ending in sh and ch).
   • C. Verb has to agree with the subject. A boy rides / ride his bicycle.
   • D. Prepositions and how they work in a sentence.
5. Sentence Combining (Combining the subject, combine a list, use adjectives to combine).

Thanks, I hope you can see why I practice the language a lot. The students need that practice so they can feel comfortable reading and writing the English language. 

Mr. Fisher


Next post tomorrow night: Guidelines for Parent Teacher Conference. (In other words I will give an outline of what I plan to share with parents, that way you will know what to expect when you visit on Wednesday or Thursday night). Conferences are 3:00 - 6:30 p.m. each night.