READING: We Will Finish Working on Determining the Main/Central/Important Idea of a Text

MRS. BAKER’S DECEMBER NEWSLETTER [email protected] READING: We will finish working on determining the main/central/important idea of a text, recounting the supporting/key details, and explaining how they support the main idea. We will continue working on point of view as first or third person and on point of view as opinion. It is important for readers to recognize when an author is trying to persuade us to agree with his or her opinion and to be able to determine if we, as readers, share that point of view. The next genre we will study will be folktales, and we will revisit theme and making predictions while reading. I also hope to do more work on helping students be able to use context clues to define unknown words in their reading. Please help them work on this at home when they read to you.

WRITING: We will be writing multiparagraph essays about our favorite holiday traditions using main ideas and supporting details, and we will be learning how to correctly punctuate dialogue in our writing. I have noticed that many of my students seem to forget to use capital letters when needed, so we will be reviewing this skill. The demonstration of command of proper paragraphing, sentence structure, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling is expected in all writing, so please encourage your child to ALWAYS use these conventions of standard English in their writing. We will also be doing more work on using adjectives to make our writing more descriptive, then move on to the use of pronouns and adverbs.

WORD STUDY: Students will be finishing spelling the plurals of different types of nouns, then we’ll move on to the proper use of comparative and superlative adjectives. If time permits, we might also work on spelling common holiday themed words, days of the week, and months of the year.

HOLIDAY PARTY: Our holiday party will be held on Wednesday, December 20. I will send home a reminder a week before the party with students who are on our party committee. I would also like to give a special “THANKS!!” to those parents who were kind enough to send treats for our harvest party. The students really appreciated it and seemed to have a very good time! I WOULD LIKE TO WISH ALL OF YOU PEACE AND JOY DURING THIS WONDERFUL SEASON OF HOLIDAYS, AND A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM MY FAMLY TO YOURS!