Expedition to Stone Mountain Reschedule
Due to some scheduling errors we had to reschedule our Stone Mountain expedition to November 30th.  Thank you so much for your understanding. 

Timeline Project
Our History of Me timeline project information was sent home last Friday. Please read the details carefully and let me know if you have any questions. This project is always one of the students’ favorites.

Student Snacks
Remember to send your student with a healthy snack daily! At the beginning of the year, we had a wonderful snack donation. At this point, we are running low on extras. 

Reading Resources
Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing a few helpful reading tips. This week, I am sharing 1^stgraders’ most often used word-decoding strategies for tricky/unknown words. Students practice all of the strategies in our reading groups. However, these are the two that students seem to use the most. As you listen to your student read, ask them about the following strategies. See if they can teach you how to use these decoding strategies. :-)  There’s no better way to really learn and use a concept than to teach it to someone else.
 
I’ll share more of our strategies in the upcoming weeks.
 
“Look at ALL the parts of the word”
Look at the word closely. Look for small words within the big word or look for word-chunks that you already know. First say the chunks. Then, say the chunks in order together. Finally, blend the chunks to say the word.
 
“Do a S-L-O-W check!”
Stretch out the sounds in the words. Say one sound/letter/chunk at a time. Slowing begin blending all of those parts back together.