Happy Monday! Yes, I know that sounds strange. How can you have a Happy Monday? Easy! Come to Mr. H’s class and see all the hard working fun we have!!!

The students had a great day and we got lots of work done. In Language Arts, we are working on a great reading program called The Daily 3. This program strives to build students into independent readers who have the stamina to read for longer and longer periods of time while using a variety of comprehension skills to aid the understanding of what they are reading.

It is a great program and I am already seeing great results. We have started with the first part of the program called Read to Self. The idea of this part of the program is to focus on building stamina and reading for longer periods of time. Right now, the students have reached 11 minutes which is fantastic!!

At the beginning of each reading period we discuss the appropriate behaviours and the three types of reading that students can use to read their books. We talked as a class about reading the words of a story, reading the pictures of a story and re-telling the story. In the next couple of weeks, we are going to be reaching 30 minutes of focused reading everyday. We will also be talking about how to choose appropriate books for their reading ability. The it will be time to move to the next sections of the program: Reading to Others and Listening To Reading. The students are very excited and I have already heard many of the children saying that they love reading.

Here are the spelling words for this week:
Spelling J3

Here is something new this week. I introduced the students to a new website called Spelling City. It is a great site where students can see their spelling words, learn their spelling words, test their spelling words and play games using their spelling words. Whew! That’s a lot of “spelling words” words! The other neat thing is that students can print out handwriting pages with their spelling words and practice handwriting their words. They can even print out the words as sign language and practice signing them!!!! It’s a great site and it’s FREE!!!! I love free!!

All you have to do is click the Spelling City box with the J3 on it below.

Every Monday, there will be another box. Clicking on the box will take you straight to the spelling list for that week.

No hard links to remember, no fancy addresses to type out, no clicking through page after page of websites to get there! No Sireeee!!!!! You just click a simple click on the Spelling City box and you are there.

I have also told the students that if they test themselves and get 100%, they should print out the test results and/or the certificate and bring it to me for a bonus mark on their spelling marks for the report card!!!!

Finally, students received their first memory verses of the year. If you remember, I had sent home a homework reminder for the students to bring in their families favorite memory verses. This year, we are going to use those favorite verses for our memory verses. As these are special verses to people and mean a lot to each of us in different ways, I thought that it would be more meaningful for students to memorize those. Our first verse is below:

Dear Children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:18

Finally, here is a funny video I found. It is hilarious!! Just wait for the surprise at the end!!