Witte Words

Greetings families!
It has been a wonderful, rainy week!
A few announcements:
Picture Day is August 25th
August 25th is also a HALF DAY. Dismissal is from 11am-11:30am.
August 30th the paper drive begins.
If you would like to donate to our classroom, DonorsChoose is the nonprofit classroom funding site for public school teachers. Why I’m emailing you today: Right now, any contribution you make to my project will be boosted 50% by Bill Gates. This is an amazing opportunity for my students! Your donation will brighten my students’ school year. Here’s our project: The “T “in S.T.E.M.! To have your donation boosted, just make a contribution on that page. (Donations will be boosted 50% automatically, but only for today 8/12. ) Your donation will go to bringing a little bit more technology in to the classroom for our reading and math rotations.
We are also always accepting water bottle donations (for kiddos that forget their water bottles), books and extra snacks for hungry bellies.
We have a little snacky before dismissal everyday.
I have attached a tentative daily schedule if you would like to see!
Please check your students green “Thursday folder” that goes home every Thursday and should come back empty on Friday. Thank you!
This week we have been talking a lot about making safe and smart choices and reviewing our rules and expectations.
The rules have fun little movements:
#1 follow directions quickly
#2 raise your hand for permission to speak
#3 raise your hand for permission to leave your seal
#4 make smart choices
#5 keep your dear learning community happy
Our expectations are:

I will try my best
I will be kind
I will be respectful
I will be tidy
I will have good character (doing the right thing, even when no one is watching)
We are also learning how to “buddy talk”. There are two kids in a group, one child is a “macaroni” and the other is “cheese”. They take turns teaching and talking and learning and listening to each other. They must be “knees to knees”, facing each other and making eye contact. They are rocking it!
In ELA: We are talking a lot about sounds of letters, our mouth shapes when we make the sounds and where out tongue, teeth and lips are when we make those sounds. We have also been talking about voiced (your vocal cords vibrate) and unvoiced sounds (just pushing out air). For example: /p/ and /b/, you make the same movements with your tongue, lips and teeth. The only difference in the sounds is one is voiced (/b/) and the other is unvoiced (/p/). We have also talked about the FLOSS rule: when do we double consonants at the end? If the vowel is short and the consonant is a F, L or S you double it. Example words: puff, mess, tell. We have also been working very hard reading different texts and looking deeper in them. We are researching and finding TEXT evidence to support our claim!
In math: We are reviewing coins, how to use a number line, fact families (using addition to solve subtraction problems), making 10, mental math and skip counting. I am also assessing them to see exactly what we need to work on moving forward.
In writing we are working very hard on handwriting. Making sure that we are not passing the dotted line when we are writing a lowercase letter (besides l, k, t, d, b). We will be starting cursive writing very soon!
Thank you for trusting me with your children! I am doing my best to ensure health and safety of all students while in my care.
Please reach out if you have any questions, comments, concerns or happy thoughts!
Thank you for your undying support!
Stay well,
Mrs. Witte
witte-21-22-schedule

So focused!