Mrs. Stutes

Hello there!

Parents, there are awesome readers in our classrooms! No matter the reading level, I am amazed at how much our students are trying to understand what they are reading and how willing they are to try strategies to help them. Please make sure that students are reading for a minimum of 20 minutes a day, including the weekends. They do get some time to read during class, but nothing beats being able to enjoy a good book with a friend or family member in some peace and quiet. This helps reading growth as far as their rate of reading, the accuracy of words, the recognition of words, and builds their vocabulary (being that the book isn't too easy for them).

Students won't have homework on short weeks or weeks when we have DCAs except for their daily 20 minutes of reading. Homework is always on a colored sheet of paper and includes phonics activities to review a spelling pattern that we are working on that week.

The STAAR Interim is coming up in a few weeks. Once we have the results from that, we will really be looking at what our students still need help with and focus our instruction on what those results are showing. I pull reading small groups to go over reading strategies and patterns. In a few weeks that will change to really go over the specific skills that the students are needing (those are what we call strategy groups).

It's February! I can't wait to see our readers grow from now until May...and beyond!