This morning we had a FANTASTIC time performing investigations on pumpkins with the help of parents and grandparents! Below are our findings and some pictures of some of the investigations performed.
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This week during Writing Workshop we investigated how different authors make their writing interesting to readers. We took a close look at Night Of The Veggie Monster by George McClements and Frankie Stein. We found that authors do A LOT of different things to make different parts of their stories stand out to reader and we talked about how these decisions are carefully decided by an author and serve different purposes. The kids then tried to incorporate some of these into their writing of their personal narratives.
Also this week we concluded our study of spiders by taking all of our knowledge we had recorded in our science notebooks and working as teams to create a simple presentation to a class of 4th graders at Wright Elementary via video chat. Each team created a poster (see above picture) with a detailed illustration on the front and facts they wanted to share with the fourth grade class on the back so they could read them while presenting. After hearing the presentations the fourth graders shared what facts they had learned about spiders. This was an AWESOME experience for us and them! Related Arts Next Week: Monday - P.E. Tuesday - Art Wednesday - Music Thursday - Library Friday - P.E. Spiders have taken over our science thinking! We have been researching about spiders and all the amazing things they have on their bodies to help them meet their basic needs. Also, we have been finding out all the various ways spiders meet their basic needs. Did you know some spiders weave a net and then throw it on their prey? Did you know that some spiders dive underwater, weave a web in their bubble and then stick a leg out to pull in their prey? I am loving all the facts we are learning and I must confess that I am learning a lot along with them!
Here are some links to videos we have watched about spiders..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5iN0ZaoW7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvRAIrSLJto In writing this week we continue to focus our conversations around how authors add details to their stories. Just like in the song The Itsy-Bitsy Spider an author zeros in on the itsy-bitsy steps in a story. They slow down important parts to add the details of what was happening, who was there, their surroundings, their actions, etc. We then also talked about how authors add details to their pictures and words by expression how a character is feeling. We took a close look at the story Betty Bunny Wants Everything today and discussed how the author was able to tell parts of the story in Itsy-Bitsy steps and show how the characters were feeling through pictures and words. We have been working hard on developing our strategies for solving addition story problems beyond counting on our fingers. We want to move students past counting on their fingers because as they solve problems involving larger and larger numbers this is not an effective strategy. In the pictures above you can see that we have been sharing our work with one another to create anchor charts for students to refer back to and an example of one student's thought process. I'm encouraging the children to solve problems using 2 different strategies as to double check their work for accuracy. Some students are not fully recording their thinking process so we are revisiting these strategies. As athletes continue to practice skills to get stronger and better, we will continue to practice these addition skills to strengthen our understanding and knowledge.
This morning the kids were met with a surprise! Our own Mr. Graham came to read us the story The Feet In The Gym! As we continue orally sharing our connections with stories as readers to help us understand and remember stories, this was a perfect read aloud for him to come and share with us. The kids LOVED having him with us! As you can see from the above picture EVERYONE was being active listeners. I just had to share this moment with you!! The kids did a fantastic job on their Number Sense assessment so we are moving along on our math journey to addition strategies! We are starting with smaller numbers to help us build out understanding of multiple ways to solve addition problems. I am asking the kids to prove their answers by showing their thinking process. In the above picture are some of the strategies we have talked about. More strategies will be covered next week! A way to support your learner at home is to give them addition problems with a sum of less than 20 to solve and ask them to show you how to use these strategies. The BIG THING I am trying to get them to understanding is to count on from the bigger number (ex: 2 + 9. They would count on from 9....9, 10, 11).
It's the season to learn about animals like BATS! In our life science standards we are covering living things needs and how to they get those met in the environment they live in. We have used the Pebblego.com online resource (which you can find on our webpage) to read and write about bats. Kids are keeping track of new knowledge by drawing and writing in their science notebooks. Related Arts Next Week: Monday - Music Tuesday - Library Wednesday - P.E. Thursday - Art Friday - No School Upcoming Dates: Sunday, Oct. 12 - Leed's Farm PTO event Wednesday, Oct. 15 & Thursday, Oct. 23 - Parent Teacher Conferences Friday, Oct. 17th - No School Friday, Oct. 31st - Harvest Parade/Party (for more information click on the link button above and then click on the Harvest party button) After many conversations with our K-2 Literacy Coach and some colleagues I am shifting my thinking about how I'm conducting our short vowel word study. Instead of studying each short vowel in isolation we are going to focus our thinking on all short vowel sounds for awhile. Students need to be able to hear and tell the difference between the short vowel sounds. Right now we are immersed in finding words with short vowels and listening for short vowels in words. Above you can see how we searched through poems to find short vowels and sorted objects into short vowels based on what they heard in the word (see the cat on the short A and the witch on short I?!).
A few ways you can help with this at home: - while your child is reading have them search the page and point out words that have short vowels - using magnetic letters (real or on a mobile device) have them spell words for you that have short vowels - on our SpellingCity.com page find the lists with short vowels and have them practice those words - when they are writing have them point out the words with short vowels to you and hold them accountable for using the right vowel How will this be assessed: - I will be looking at their writing samples and making sure they are using them accurately. - Over the next few days I will be observing them while working with words to see if they are using them accurately. - After awhile I will be asking students to create short vowels using magnetic letters and seeing if they can generate words with accurate short vowel sounds. During Reading Workshop we have been talking about how readers use their schema (background knowledge) to help them make connections to the text. We learned that schema is our background knowledge we have from things we have read, seen, done, experienced, etc. By making connections while reading our brain engages in comprehending what we have read. I have modeled this by sharing my connections to stories while reading out loud to them. Their favorite this week is when I read Owen and I told them stories about my love for the very tattered, worn blanket in the picture. Ask your child about this book! We will be working on this skill for the next few weeks.
In writing workshop we talked about the idea of writers going back to work they have done to reread it and make changes to make even better than before. We read some mentor texts and I did some modeling of slowing down moments in stories and adding details to it. In the example above the student had previously written "I walked upstairs". She cut out new sentence lines, glued it over her previous work and then wrote "Me and my friend walked up my stairs. Then me and my friend played with dolls". |
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May 2015
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