Week in Review-Gingerbread

Reading:

In reading this week, we learned about the reading strategy “Summarize a text”. We learned that when you summarize you tell someone about a book or any story but do not need to give several key details. When you summarize you say 2-3 sentences to give the basic meaning of what the story was about. This concept was a little hard for most of the class to understand because we are used to telling the main idea, supporting details and retelling the beginning, middle and end of a story. We like to give lots of detail! Having to switch things up and leave out a lot of detail but still get the point across of what the story was about is more difficult than one might think!

We also learned all about the -og family. To kick off our learning of this word family, we watched a video that had us reading and learning new words that end with the -og sound. We built words in the -og family, we went on a word hunt where we chopped the sounds up in the word and found it in a pile of other -og words and we practiced rhyming with all of the words in the -og family.

Our vocabulary words this week went with the story The Gingerbread Man. We loved learning all about the words batter, dough, glaze, sow, single and delicious. .

Our new sight words: he, in

**Be sure to keep the white sight word cards from week to week and continue to practice all of them as new ones are sent home every week.

Our Poem of the Week:

iPad Fun:

Reading

• Gingerbread Cookie/ChatterKid: We used these two apps to create a gingerbread by first mixing the batter, rolling out the dough, baking and finishing up by decorating the cookie. After decorating, we saved a picture of the cookie and we recorded ourselves saying something that if we were a gingerbread man what would we run away from as fast as we could!.
• Google Classroom: We uploaded our gingerbread cookie recordings into Google Classroom. We are getting better and better at learning how to do this task independently!
• Word Wagon: This is a new app where students pick an image and build the letters that make up that word!

Math

• Book Creator: This week students used the app Book Creator on their own by adding a journal entry of the activity number of the day! We have been doing number of the day as a whole class since the first week of school and they are now experts and are able to do this on their own! They rolled a dice to find their number, wrote the number, the number word, drew the dice, tally marks, number of shapes and number line! They finished the activity by recording their voice explaining their thinking and what they did with the number of the day.
• Animal Math: Students used the animal math game this week to practice addition problems!

Writing:

Writer’s Workshop this week, we learned all about ending punctuation! We learned why we have to have punctuation at the end of a sentence and the three most common types of punctuation...the period, exclamation mark and the question mark. We learned what type of sentences each of these symbols would be found at the end and we are working on remembering to add them into our own writing.

We also learned how to write write creative stories this week by writing a fantasy story in the same format of a true story. We have worked so hard learning how to write a true story, that learning how to write a fantasy story was an easy transition. The class was excited to be able to add in silly characters and things the characters do that really could not happen in real life but make for a funny story! We also learned how to add a speech bubble to our illustrations to show the characters talking to one another.

Math:

Our math vocabulary word this week was the word “addends”. We learned that the two numbers being put together in an addition sentence are called “addends”.

Our math focus this week was all about addition! We learned that you can use several different strategies to solve addition problems. We learned how to use math tools, a number line and even draw a picture. We also learned that sometimes we don’t need any strategies other than our brain! There are some addition problems we just know by memory too!

Content:

This week was all about Thanksgiving!

• Monday--We read the book The Gingerbread Boy.
• Tuesday--We read the book The Gingerbread Man and The Gingerbread Mouse.
• Wednesday--We read the book The Gingerbread Baby.
• Thursday--We completed a craft to go along with the story The Gingerbread Baby where we created a gingerbread house out of paper and put a gingerbread baby in it, just like the character in the story did.
• Friday--We went on a gingerbread hunt around the school! We were going to eat gingerbread cookies and someone peeked in the oven too soon and they all jumped out and took us on a wild goose chase around the school! Finally, we were able to find them back in our classroom and we were sure to gobble them up before they ran away again.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL):

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

This week’s SEL focus was learning about HONESTY and knowing the difference between telling a “squeal” on someone or if it’s a “big deal”. We read the story Don’t Squeal Unless It’s a Big Deal and learned the difference between kid sized problems and adult problems. The kid sized problems are ones that can be handled by kids and if there is something or someone being hurt or injured that would be a problem that an adult needs to handle. We sorted out different scenarios where we had to decide as a class if they were a squeal or considered a big deal and why. It was a great discussion and we are all well on our way to becoming our own problem solvers!

A few discussion questions to talk with your child at home about this topic:

--What is an example of a kid sized problem?

--What is an example of an adult sized problem?

--Why is it important to not tell an adult about everything that happens?

Something EXTRA:

We have a classroom elf arrive from the North Pole this week. We started off right away giving him a name and continuing to be on our best behavior at school. One day he didn't move from his spot and we realized he had a cold just like several of us in class! When we went to music and came back he was holding a tissue! What a silly elf. We named him "Bun Bun". We are having so much fun with him and are excited he will be with us for the next couple of weeks!

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Have your practice basic addition facts under 10! Encourage them to use math tools (any small items you have around the house to help them add like cereal, small toys or even pennies), a number line or have them draw a picture to solve the problem. .

Next Week:

• In reading we will focus on asking and responding to questions.
• In writing we will continue focusing on true stories, fantasy stories and publishing finished stories into Book Creator and uploading them into Google Classroom
• In math we will focus on length and weight
• Our theme next week is all about the Grinch!

 

Important Dates/Information:

**Go to our classroom webpage if you want to see important dates on a calendar! I will update this classroom calendar as dates and events come about.

• 12/7--Hour of Code (at school during the morning)
• 12/7--Reindeer Stem Activity (during the afternoon)
• 12/8--Barnes and Noble Night
• 12/9--Grinch Day
• 12/9--Spirit Day Wear PJ’s