Group A in math has worked with coin values, 1/2 of a set, estimation, grouping by 5's, using tally marks, the ellipse, hexagon and parallelogram. Group B has focused on diagonals, greater than and less than, adding 7, 8 and 9 to double digit numbers, learning the two 5's strategy on the abacus, and with thousands. |
We have worked the last several weeks on our body outline skeletons. First we traced our partner, then we cut out our flat self. Next we drew what we thought the skeleton would look like on one side of the body. Then next week we studied the bones and drew a more accurate skeleton on the flip side. Here are some of those... Our big words have been every, come, first and friend. We have done a few new activities to practice these, like sailboat writing, tic tac toe, and rainbow writing. We used the tiny objects to sort for short vowel sounds. We continue to read in small groups and hopefully your child is regularly bringing home finished stories to read aloud at home for practice. We have had a transportation theme going which we have integrated into art, writing, reading and math. One last initiative is our venture into the studies we will undertake for our semester inquiry. Some of the children will study more about the human body, others will study electricity, magnetism or motion. We are developing our goals for the semester, which includes considering questions to lead our inquiry and projects to present our learning. Above are a few pictures from our "Rainbow Center" time. Our final picture shows raccoon tracks that were found near the creek.
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Here is a snapshot of our week. Math groups in book A worked with the math balance this week. On Thursday we used the balance to work with the doubles facts. We did some end of semester assessment to see where we stand with the goals we set in our October IQ meetings. We will finish that up next week. We worked a lot on our EXPO presentation and added a whole new piece that we think is going to be so fabulous. We added the qu and ou sounds to our growing set of phonemes. We also started a brand new read aloud, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Today we made Peppermint Humbugs for the Harry Christmas feast.
Words with sneaky silent e...something you can begin to notice together. These Owls are working to put the letters of the alphabet back in order. This math work is called partitioning. The students are taking the number 5 apart. We visited the Pflugerville Public Library with the Stealthy Ninja Ferret class and checked out books about hurricanes and tornadoes. We worked on our special top secret projects and we played a hurricane/tornado trivia game with facts we have been learning.
Me on the Map: We have been creating a map section in our Social Studies notebook. We began with our classroom map and added our city, state, country, continent and planet. The students here are writing in their Writer's notebook. There are lots of right places to write. I cannot show you any pictures of our weather projects because they are top secret for EXPO, but you hopefully have seen the surveys. We will be compiling our data and documenting our findings. We got a really super cool weather station donated to our class by Nora's family which we finished installing today! Of all the things that have happened in the past two weeks, the tornado warnings were perhaps the most exciting. Here the owls are huddled in an interior closet of the theater in their Halloween costumes. We had a chance to begin planning the details of our small group weather presentations this week, and to finally see some changes in the weather. The humidity is rising, rain is falling, and the wind is picking up. We finished reading Flat Stanley, and worked on a summary of the book. In our reading journal we have a card with "first, then, and last." Students can choose to write a three sentence summary or to draw pictures. In our listening center we heard the story of "The Little Red Hen." Math Matters: A group worked with odds and evens this week. B group worked with doubling numbers from 1 to 10. The brass bowl doubles everything that goes into it. The boys are working on a street with houses numbering even numbers on one side and odd on the other side. We mixed red and yellow paint to make orange and used the orange to paint pumpkins. Here are some that are completed. We learned about different kinds of smart...Multiple Intelligences. Each student spent time answering questions to see which of the intelligences are more developed. Many of the students came out strong in all of the intelligences, indicating strong curiosity and a joy for life. The chart below doesn't include natural intelligence, but our survey did. The morning we met to complete the surveys, we packed up our books and journals and grabbed our yoga mats and had literacy outside. There was much more as usual. Until next week...
This week we began doing some mapping. We mapped the story of the Three Little Pigs on Tuesday, and a castle scene with goats and a horse on Thursday. We worked with Jj and oa this week. Goats have oa and they eat oats. We went out to the barnyard to draw goats in our nature journals. We discovered that Coconut has a little beard now! We continued charting the weather every day. We added barometric pressure to our investigation. The thing that changed the most was the humidity. We worked with our weather groups to think and discuss some season questions like: Which season do animals eat more? Which season has more rain? What causes seasons? After our discussions and class sharing, we watched two short movies. One was about seasons and one about fall. In math, A groups worked with quadrilaterals, parallels, and triangles as well as tallying amounts to 10. B group worked with odd and even numbers, and writing addition equations. We started a new read aloud, Flat Stanley, and began making Halloween art in the art center. The week went very fast!
Today we will be meeting to discuss the goals your children and I have set for this semester. Setting goals is an important part of our school culture. Setting goals helps us blossom. This week we worked with the letter sounds (b) an (ai). Most of the students still have trouble telling b and d apart. You can help them by having them practice making b and d at home. Baking bread is always fun...make a b shaped bun. Of course, you can bathe the dog. Here is Bellisima, my dog, getting a bath this week. We worked with the -all family of words, all, ball, call, tall, fall, wall and mall. We worked with rhyming words and continued our weather until. To help us understand the upcoming holiday, Columbus Day, we did a water color of the ocean to retell the story of Columbus coming across the Atlantic Ocean in the three ships from Spain, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. We learned that sometimes people who make important contributions to the world also cause harm to others. We had a Tuesday tea party with hats in honor of Mercy Watson, who had a tea party with Stella and Frank in book 5. Unlike Mercy, we got to drink real tea and eat real tea cakes (batty cakes that we baked that morning). We drank tea in the china cups that belonged to Alessandra's great great grandmother. Nothing got broken! Finally, I have some shots of the reptile show. It was outstanding!
We made wind socks this week, launching our study of weather. We are recording the weather in science notebooks. We worked with the (u) sound on Monday, and played umbrella bingo in our reading groups. We also learned a fun song about a HUGE umbrella.
Another big work this week was the work of setting goals to prepare for our IQ meetings next week. This is not the easiest thing to do, because we want to think we already know everything there is to know. It also seems like we might need to work hard if we have goals. Are we sure we want to agree to that kind of thing? Hmm? YES! Sadly, Eva had to move to a charter school this week. Her family is hoping to be able to come back. Word Work Every day each group of students works on reading, spelling and writing skills appropriate for their goals. Some students are writing and recognizing letters and sounds. This week they worked with letters that start with c when you write them (a, d, g, o). Other students work with decodable words made from the letters we have introduced since week 1. And another group worked on reading passages with comprehension and tricky words from the Word Wall. Math groups in level A worked with ordering, and tallying amounts up to ten. The level B group worked with writing equations and place value. Finally, we began Mercy Watson Thinks Like a Pig. The funny thing was that the Watsons were enjoying lemonade this week just like we were!
Welcome to our classroom blog. This picture was taken the first day of school. Unfortunately Eva hadn't yet arrived, so we are not complete. We have been Working with the sounds for d and g this week. We added dragon and downward dog to our yoga positions and will be adding gate and geyser as well. Today we heard the story of the "Three Billy Goats Gruff." We retold the story with troll and goat puppets during buddy reading. This is our center rotation board. The students are learning to look to see what activity they have next. We are continuing to learn the procedures for each activity. We managed to build our read to self stamina time to 8 minutes 30 seconds as a class! Hurray! We had our first drum circle in honor of the letter d. Here is a clip Erin took of our work together. We did our first nature journaling on Monday in the barnyard. The duck made an excellent model. Here is a little slide show of some of our Literacy activities. Our fabulous read aloud is Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise. We are reading the 4th book in this series and loving it. Mercy Watson is a top contender for favorite part of the day at Harvest. I think that is all for this first newsletter/blog. Hoot!
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