The children were busy as little bees this week! Read on to see what we've been up to!
* Thank you for sending in your conference notes so promptly! We have our building meeting to arrange conferences on Tuesday morning. Its nice having everyone's requested times handy so we can plan accordingly!
* The 4th grade musical is next week! The children will be watching our 4th graders perform on Wednesday afternoon.
* The book fair is coming to Dryden! You might have noticed there were no February Book Orders from our class. That is because the children will be able to choose their books LIVE this time! Our class will be visiting the book fair on Tuesday morning, February 22.
*Our Valentine Party will be taking place on Monday afternoon. Don't forget to include all of our classmates on your valentine list! (Scroll down to see the names of the children in our class, they were posted a week or two back.) Our goal is to provide the children with a healthy and a sweet treat, a drink, and an opportunity to exchange some sweet and caring notes with their classmates!
* THANK YOU to the Marx and the Ryan families for sending in some Clorox wipes! With two friends home sick today, its a constant reminder that its in our best interests to keep the classroom as free of germs as we possibly can. We had a really good cleaning again today! Thank you!!
Spelling
The children practiced words with r-controlled vowels this week- words that have /er/ sound, spelled ‘er,’ ‘ir,’ and ‘ur.’ Next week we will be looking at words with the /oo/ sound!
Reading
After building their listening comprehension with a story about a sneaky turtle and a curious fox, the children strengthened their oral vocabulary with the words: reluctant, pursue, vicinity, delay and camouflage. Our whole group story this week was called, “Goose’s Story.” It was about a young girl who sees the geese fly to her pond in the spring. She is very happy until she sees a goose who is injured, and eventually loses a foot. In this story, many things happen. Each event causes another event to happen. We were sad to see that the other geese would stay away from the injured goose because she appeared different. We talked about how unfair it was for the geese to treat her this way! We were relieved at the end of the story to find that she had found a great friend in another goose. She was no longer alone and we imagined how that must have made her feel. A comprehension strategy we reviewed the concept of cause and effect. The vocabulary words that went along with this story are: balance, deserted, freezes, imagine, saddest, and wider. This story really encouraged our class to think about people who are different than we are. The children could see first hand how important it is to be kind and considerate to all people no matter what differences they may have from us. Our small groups continue to meet where the children reinforce their decoding skills while building their comprehension skills simultaneously.
Grammar
The children worked with quotation marks this week! We noticed that there are certain words that are used when someone is “talking” in a sentence, including: said, shouted, whispered, asked, and exclaimed.
The children also learned about comparative and superlative words. They learned that comparative words compare two people or things, and end with “er.” Ex: My desk is wider than my paper. Superlative words compare three or more people or things, and end with “est.” Ex: I am the happiest student in my whole class!
Math
We have finished Unit 6! The children brought home Math Journal 1 today. Please know that while we work in our math journals each day, there still may be a page or two that is incomplete. That’s okay, the journal is a work in progress. Feel free to go through the math journal with your child and have them tell you about what they’ve learned throughout the first half of our school year! Encourage them to go back and complete any incomplete work for a review/reinforcement of learned skills. Coming up in Unit 7 the children will be working on patterns in counting. We will be extending this to counting by any number, also known as “n.” The children will be encouraged to describe patterns they see. We have also begun finding complements of 10, (1:9, 2:8, 3:7, 4:6, 5:5) and we realized that when adding numbers that make a ten, it makes adding large numbers really easy! You will find the new math parent letter in your child's red home folder.
Science
Our habitat research is beginning to wind down. The children have begun creating a slideshow presentation in the LMC to showcase their learning. Each child is going to be responsible for dragging and dropping an appropriate photo, and then recording their facts in a garage band file which will be imported into the presentation. The children feel such ownership over their projects! It will be so much fun to watch the children learn from each other next week.
Coming Soon:
February 14: Valentine's Celebration! 2:45-3:25
February 16: 4th grade Musical
February 21: No School, President's Day
February 22-24th: PTA Book Fair
Thanks for reading! Enjoy the weekend!
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