Dear Parents,
As this semester draws to a close, I'd like to take this opportunity to sum up our accomplishments, challenges, and suggest some to-dos over the short winter break to give the kids a head start on the Spring semester. In twenty weeks this year, we have furthered our use of pronouns, subject-verb agreement in the present, past, progressive, and future tenses for the first time. We have continued with our phonics and decoding skills to include digraphs and diphthongs and are beginning to decode multiple syllable words. While the majority of our kids don't have a problem absorbing the skills being imparted, focus and retention remain a challenge for a large group scoring low 70s and below.
On the whole, focus, retention and speaking fluency are the biggest challenges our kids will have to overcome in order to really master the skills they have learned. It is obvious from their test scores that more than a few students are performing barely at or below grade level for reasons mentioned above. Hereinafter are some areas our kids of all levels can work on during the winter break and on to the spring semester; as I have mentioned since the first grade for the kids that started in class 103 with Teacher Ivy and me, Fry's 1000 Sight Words List http://www.k12reader.com/Fry-Words/fry_complete_1000.pdf for learners of English is a list of words that our kids must know and use proficiently. They will acquire 100 words per grade starting with the first 100. They must be able to say the words, recognize them, give their easy definition and use them in a sentence of their own. Depending on which 100 words your child is having trouble with, you can then judge whether they are on, at or above level. The aforementioned link includes all 1000 words.
In the areas of speaking fluency and focus, all our students will improve from reading books of their own interest, watching movies and shows with the English subtitles on, and playing various games that will help improve their concentration. I know a few kids in our class that can really benefit from the tips found on this site; https://flintobox.com/blog/child-development/13-tips-increase-concentration-kids. Have a great winter vacation and I'll continue to post relevant pointers, book and site referrals.
