January+17,+2012+-+family+letter

Dear Families, Today we began focusing on our learning goal of determining importance and ultimately – SUMMARIZING. We reviewed each child’s poem(s) from week one’s reading and then we quickly reread (like good readers sometimes do), and we determined the FOUR MAIN IDEAS/EVENTS of the first section. You will find a copy of the work that I modeled. I am sorry that it is messy, but the important idea is that we were thinking together and we do NOT need to necessarily BE artists – we just need to capture the main idea with a drawing and perhaps embellish a little with speech bubbles. The second step was to turn each picture into the 4 main idea / event sentences. Next week we will add a SUMMARY TOPIC SENTENCE. Please read with your child pages, 20-37 and complete the summary sheet in much the same fashion as the example. If they should have anything they want to add to the THINK NOTE/QUESTION/PREDICTION portion of the sheet that is excellent. Since the space is small, please feel free to have the kids write in their folder. Thank you and once again, if you have any questions please feel free to email or stop by the room at 3:00. Sincerely,

Tammy Falcone tfalcone@lps.k12.co.us