Weekly Update: January 24-28

Greetings!

Does February really begin next week? Let’s hope that groundhog doesn’t see his shadow, and some warmer days are ahead! 

• Below I have attached the first names of the 23 students in our class for you to use as a reference when preparing your valentines!
• Thank you for participating in Crazy Hat Day! The children enjoyed seeing the crazy hats that popped up today!

Spelling

This week the children had the opportunity to choose their own spelling words.  The students spent time during class picking words they were interested in, words from our rain forest unit, words that are important to or often used by them, or high-frequency words.  

Reading

We have concluded our winter round of testing. Scores from both the MAP assessments and CBM assessments (reading fluency) will be available for you at conference time!

The children enhanced their vocabularies with Text Talk this week! We read The Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon. The kids were introduced to 6 juicy new words: distraction, contagious, remedies, vanished, altered, and perplexed. We were challenged  in class to use these words as much as possible, and we tallied each time they were used! At the end of the week, it appears that "vanished" had won! (Did you hear any of these words come out at home? I hope you did! :)

We will be ready to begin Unit 4 of Treasures next week!

Math

This week we worked on solution strategies for addition and subtraction problems as well as solving 2-digit addition and subtraction problems with number stories.  The students did a great job at writing their own number stories on their homelink!  We also discussed “start-change-end”, “parts-and-total”, and “quantity, quantity, difference” number stories. The children worked to read story problems and determine which diagram would best help them solve the problem.  We also worked on our “Mad Minute” for subtraction- and even reviewed our addition facts!  The students are doing very well and their scores are constantly improving!  It is so exciting to see the students get faster each day and get excited when they have improved!  Try timing your student at home to see how fast they can solve their math facts!

Cursive

I continue to be impressed with the children’s beautiful handwriting! Again, here are the keys to writing our best:

1. Sit tall in our chairs with both feet on the floor, and our shoulders back
2. Slightly slant the paper
3. Place our guide hand down on the top corner of the paper

This encourages proper posture and reminds them to take their handwriting seriously! Please encourage these same steps at home!

Science

The children have really developed a strong understanding of the rain forest habitat. We have studied its location, layers, animals, plants, and even how humans use and destroy this habitat. The students are amazed to hear about the destruction it faces as 2,000 trees are cut down every minute. They are putting together a multi-paragraph essay of showing all of the learning they have done over the last few weeks. After our practice as a class, we are ready to break into small cooperative learning groups next week to zero in on one of the following habitats: mountain, desert, ocean, lake, and prairie!

Coming Soon:

February 2: Ground Hog’s Day!

February 14:  Valentine's Day Party; 2:45 pm. See our class list attached below! 

Thanks for reading!
Enjoy the weekend!

  

Valentine’s List

1. Christine
2. Lucas
3. Kristopher
4. Emily
5. Michael D.
6. Hannah
7. Nicolette
8. Peter
9. Audrey
10. Annie
11. Logan
12. Azan
13. Aleksandra
14. Robert
15. Noah
16. Lexi
17. Eric
18. Alya
19. Jack
20. Michael R.
21. Sarah
22. Matthew
23. Brooke

Weekly Update: January 18-21

This week was short and sweet, yet we accomplished so much!

• Our cursive handwriting practice has begun! The children have promised not to go ahead as we learn the letters of the alphabet in cursive. I can see that they are taking this very seriously! I love to see how tall they sit in their chairs, with proper posture, their paper slanted, and their guide hand holding their paper steady. Their handwriting is coming through right on the lines, and so smoothly, too! I'm so impressed!

Spelling

The children worked on words with the “consonant clusters” this week. These words all begin with /sc/, /scr/, /sp/, /spr/ and /st/, /str/.

Reading

This week we read a story that many of the children had seen before, called “Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type.” We worked on the comprehension strategy of visualizing the story as we read along. The children also identified examples of Cause and Effect throughout the story.  Ex:  *Because the cows were cold, they wrote a letter asking for electric blankets.  *Because the farmer would not give them electric blankets, they would no longer give him milk!  New vocabulary word we worked on include: demand, emergency, furious, impatient, sincerely, and snoop.

As we have discussed various literary elements, the children and I are constantly on the lookout for examples of them.  Lucas showed me an example of a simile (comparison using like or as) in his library book this afternoon! Alya recognized alliteration (repetition of the “b” sound) as Peter read aloud to the class during his star student presentation! All of the kids found examples of onomatopeia as we read the story “ROAR!” earlier in the week, it was full of words that imitate the sound they make.  The children are challenged to include these elements during our poetry writing, as well!

You might have heard, we have begun a new read-aloud, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! Its so much fun to bond together as a class through the sharing of a story.  I love to watch how excited the children get as they listen to the book- they actually cheered today when they found out that Charlie had found the 5th golden ticket! (hooray! :) 

Grammar

The children worked to combine two short sentences with the same subject or predicate into one sentence using the word “and.” We reviewed correct punctuation at the end of sentences, too!

Math

We worked on three key concepts this week. First we practiced solving addition problems with three addends.  We reviewed identifying numbers that “make a ten,” because those are the easiest numbers to add together first.  Next, we worked on comparison number story problems. Coming up, the children will become more familiar with the “Quantity, Quantity, Difference” diagram to help them solve subtraction story problems

Our subtraction fact practice is going strong. The children are familiar with a variety of strategies to help them solve these facts. The strategies include: Count up, Count back, -8 and -9. Keep up the good work!

Science

We continue to explore the amazing rainforest! The children learned the four layers (sung to the tune “If You’re Happy and You Know It!” Have them sing it for you! We are in the process of constructing our own miniature rainforests in which we can label and describe each layer. We read a book this week called The Shaman’s Apprentice, which showed us all of the endless resources the rainforest provides us, especially in the area of medicine. Thinking about the fact that acres of the rainforest are being destructed every minute is a sad one. We will talk more about the destruction of this valuable habitat next week as we draw this portion of our unit to a close.

Coming Soon:

Monday, January 24: SIP Day. The children will have a nice long weekend while the teachers are back to work!

Tuesday, January 25: Back to School!

Friday, January 28: Spirit Day- Crazy Hats!

Have a nice weekend!

Weekly Update January 10-14

• The children completed both their Reading and Math MAP tests this week. I was so pleased to see that the children took this assessment seriously and did their best. 
• Many were proud to have increased their scores! Great job!

Reading

In order to build our oral vocabularies, the children listened to the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The new vocabulary words we learned were: vain, exquisite, display, deceive, and applause. Challenge your children to use these words over the weekend!

Our theme this week was “Putting on a Performance.” The children read a nonfiction piece about the students at the Alvin Ailey Dance School in New York City. They were preparing for their spring performance.  We practiced summarizing the story. To do this, we identified three key ideas we read about, and then put them all together to recreate what the story was mainly about. .  Our new vocabulary words of the week were mood, perform, effort, proud, remember, and students. The children also learned about the literary elements of alliteration! After listening to a silly story about The Worrywarts, the children were quickly able to see that alliteration is the repetition of the initial sounds of words in a text. The Worrywarts were a group of wombats and weasels who ate watermelon and wafers and worried about warthogs!  We also read the lyrics of a song together, highlighting repeated phrases and alliteration as

Grammar

We worked on the past tense of the word “have.” The children practiced substituting ‘has’ and ‘had’ for this word in a variety of sentences. We also identified book titles in sentences, making sure to capitalize the important words as well as underline them for emphasis!

Math

Thank you for sending in so many interesting objects for our shapes museum! After learning about each shape in class, it was such an powerful authentic application of these skills! The children learned the differences/similarities between the: pyramid, rectangular prism, cylinder, sphere, and cone. Using “Magneatos,” the children worked in small groups to build a variety of different pyramids. We noticed that the name of the pyramid was based on the shape of its base (ex: triangular pyramid, square pyramid, hexagonal pyramid, etc.) The students learned about the apex (point on top), vertices, edges and faces. They were eager to point out each of these terms on the shapes they created!

Science

Our in-depth study of the rainforest has begun! The children put on their "Rainforest Explorer" badges every time our science lessons begin! Each of the children has received a graphic organizer on which to take notes as we study this amazing habitat. We are going to be looking at the definition, climate, location, plants, animals, human impact, destruction and other interesting facts! The children are already showing signs of interest and concern about this fascinating, yet rapidly disappearing, habitat. 

Handwriting

The children took a handwriting test today! We were checking to make sure that everyone is fully capable of printing neatly before beginning our cursive lessons next week.  PLEASE do not teach your child cursive ahead of time! It can be very confusing if they are shown different ways to make the same letter, and its very difficult to "unteach" something they have already begun practicing at home. I appreciate your help with that!!

                                                      Have a wonderful, long weekend!

                                                           See you on Tuesday!

Happy New Year!

I hope you all enjoyed the nice long break from school, are well-rested, and ready to settle in to a great new year. The children kicked off 2011 by thinking about and writing down their new year's resolutions! These are on display in the hallway outside our classroom.

The LMC will be closed next week due to MAP Testing. Our students will be taking their reading test on Monday afternoon, and their math test on Thursday afternoon. We will have book checkout again the following Friday.

Spelling

The children worked on words with the “H brothers” this week. These words began with /th/, /ch/, /wh/, or /sh/. Next week we will also see the "H brothers," but we will find them hiding in the middle or at the end of the words.

Reading

Did you know that millions of years ago giant crocodiles were as long as a school bus? We read all sorts of
facts like that one in "Meet the Super Croc." We though about what the article was really about. We looked for the most important ideas and facts about crocodiles. Then we organized them to create a summary of the article in a short way. New vocabulary words we practiced with this week's theme include: ancient, confirm, hopeful, unable, and valid.

We also worked on adding prefixes and suffixes to root words. The children did a good job identifying these parts and determining how they affect the meaning of the root word. In grammar, the children learned to add 'ed' to regular verbs to put them in the past tense. We realized that words that end in a consonant often need to have the consonant doubled before the 'ed' is added!

Writing

Our new writing unit focuses on Poetry! We kicked off the unit by listening to several poems. The children began thinking about "what poetry is." We observed that some- but not all- poetry rhymes, its not always in complete sentences, it uses fun and descriptive language, and it tells about a topic! We decided that there are not specific rules in poetry. The children began making a list of topics that they would like to write a poem about. We followed our writing framework of "think, draw, label, write" as we worked this week to create poems! In order to add some interest to their writing, we reviewed the concept of a simile (using "like" or "as"
to make a comparison) and we also discussed alliteration as we read a silly story about the "WorryWarts." It was a book full of words that began with the letter 'w'. It can be so much fun to play with words in these two ways! The children are having fun stretching their thinking and writing this creative and open-ended writing format! I was excited to see the children move toward the poetry section of the library this week to make their reading selections! Also, I've found a few poetry links that I've added to the blog in the margin on the right so the children can practice at home, too!

Math

We have begun Unit 5 in math which surrounds 2 and 3 Dimensional shapes. The children learned about points, and practiced making, naming, and connect them to make line segments. They also practiced naming the line segments! We identified a range of polygons with the help of the pattern block template. We reviewed that polgons are multi-sided shapes that are closed, with straight edges, that do not overlap. The children went on to identify parallel lines and gave great examples of parallel lines they observed in our classroom (ceiling tiles, bricks, mini-blinds on our windows), as well as parallel lines you can find in the community (the sidewalk, and the railroad tracks!) Given geoboards and rubber bands, the class created triangles, quadrangles, pentagons and hexagons. They transferred their creations into their math journals using a ruler to ensure that their lines were as straight as possible. Looking at the triangle, the children worked to label the vertex, sides, and angles. Thank you for sending in shapes for our "Shapes Museum!" It makes the learning so much more authentic when we make that real world connection. We will be using those shapes in our lesson Tuesday of next week, so its not too late to send them in if you haven't already done so.)

If that was not enough, we have also begun drilling those subtraction facts this week. The children are now familiar with two strategies, -9, and the "Count Back" strategy- used when subtracting 1,2, or 3. In the LMC this week, the children visited a website where they were able to practice their math facts in a timed way. (The site we used is also linked on our blog to the right.) The children's scores are already on the rise! What a teachable group I have!

Science

We have started our unit on Habitats! This unit will be split into two parts. The first part will be a whole class unit studying the Rainforest. As a class, we will learn about its location, climate, animals, plants, as well as the way it benefits humans -and the way it is being destructed by humans. The children will learn how to take notes in a graphic organizer and then arrange their learning into a final product.

In the second part of this unit, the children will be divided into small cooperative learning groups. In these small groups they will study another habitat in a similar way, but on their own this time. Working together, the groups will study one of the following habitats: plains, river, mountains, arctic, desert, and ocean. They will use the exact same organizer used while studying the rainforest, and they will "teach" the class what they learned at the end!

That's it for now...

Happy New Year!