Week in Review-Gingerbread

Reading:

This week in reading we focused on comparing and contrasting our gingerbread books. We read books about the gingerbread man, boy, girl, baby, friends and even pirates! It was exciting to see which books had similar characters, settings and problems. A few of the books the gingerbread man was not able to out trick the fox and others he/she was saved! Some books also did not have a fox as the bad guy, there was one book that Santa almost ate the cookies! Luckily they were able to talk him out of it ;). We had so much fun finding things that were the same and different between all of the books we read. We also took characters and compared and contrasted those as well!

During our vocabulary review lesson this week, we took three of our words, wrote and illustrated using the app DoodleBuddy to show our understanding of the word.

Writing:

Writing this week focused on fixing, correcting and editing our own writing. We learned how we can check our writing for mistakes and errors. The first way we can see if something needs to be fixed is by seeing if our writing is easy or hard to read. If it is hard to read, we know that we need to fix something. A few things we practiced fixing were spacing, spelling sight words correctly, making sure we write all of the sounds we hear in a word correctly without adding any letters that we don’t hear and being sure to finish the sentences completely without leaving any words out. Teaching children how to edit their writing helps them become independent thinkers both before, during and after writing.

Below you will see examples from a book I wrote and had students help me correct. The first page I wrote all of the words together with no spacing. We practiced erasing our mistake reaaaaally good and then rewriting with meatball and noodle spaces. On the second page, I misspelled all of my sight words and did not finish my last sentence. On the final page, I left off beginning, middle or ending sounds of unknown words and I forgot to draw my picture! The pictures below are of the finished book after the class helped me with my corrections.

Math:

This week in math was filled with several different topics. We practiced sorting objects by shape, color and size, as well as drawing 2D shapes! We have a new choice at math by myself where we practice these shapes. In a few weeks, we will have another choice where students take shapes and create a picture and then draw that picture they created on a paper.

Our math vocabulary word this week was the word "add". Students wrote everything they know about the word in their journals. They wrote addition sentences using numbers and pictures, as well as writing the word and the definition.









Content:

Oh where, oh where is our gingerbread man! What fun this week learning, reading, playing, chasing and eating gingerbread cookies. We finished our week off by going on a gingerbread hunt around the school finding clues in different parts of the building. Each clue had a QR code attached to it that linked to a video where the gingerbread man told us another clue to try and find him. In the end, he gave us a book to read back in our classroom where he had left us some delicious cookies to eat!

Another fun activity we did this week was use an app where we learned how to roll out dough, cut the cookie, bake and decorate a gingerbread cookie. After decorating we saved the picture of our cookie and then put it into the app ChatterKid and recorded ourselves saying if we were a gingerbread man what we would want to run away from. They were so cute! I posted a few of the videos on the blog.

Our Elf on the Shelf arrived this week! We named him "Jingle" and he has been up to all kinds of things! One day we came in and he knocked off all of our lunch and behavior clips! That silly elf!

Extra:

As a school wide behavior celebration, students kindergarten through fifth grade went to Purdue University to see the Christmas Show. The students were absolutely wonderful and the show was a blast. I hope they came home telling you how the evil queen from the South Pole tried to steal Christmas away from Santa, but in the end he was freed and Christmas was back on! Thank you to the chaperones who were able to attend with the class!

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Have your child create numbers bonds for you at home. Give them a number 1-10, have them draw that many shapes, take a line in between and count how many are on one side and how many are on the other and write them in a number bond! They can also do this by writing an addition sentence.

 

Next Week:

• In reading we will practice asking and responding to questions during a story.
• In writing we will continue learning how to write a narrative story and talk about how to use a checklist.
• In math we will focus on adding and number bonds!
• Our theme next week is all about the HOLIDAYS!

Important Dates/Information:

• 12/8-Barnes and Noble Night 5-7:30
• 12/8-Ornament Day 2-3PM
• 12/10-Penguin Patch
• 12/15-Grinch Day
• 12/18-Polar Express, Book Exchange and Pajama Day
• 12/16-Christmas Program. Students arrive at McCutcheon High School no later than 6:30 and the show begins at 7:00
• 12/18-End of 2nd Nine Weeks