Monday, January 25, 2016

Week in Review--100th Day of School



Reading:



As adult readers we make predictions often without even realizing it. We do it when we watch movies, read a book, or hear someone tell us a story. It is a way of focusing our attention and motivating us to want to hear or read more. Children benefit from predicting in the same way. Therefore, it is important that we guide them to not only predict what will happen, but to also confirm their predictions. To predict, readers tell what they think will happen in the story. To confirm, readers find out if their predictions were true, partially true, or way off. Using this strategy gives readers the chance to make connections to the text, think ahead, and become more engaged.


How can you help your child with this strategy at home?


1. When reading with your child, model this strategy aloud. Use your background knowledge, picture clues, and other details in the selection to make a prediction. Then, after reading, check to see if your prediction was correct. Tell your child what you are thinking so it is clear how you predict and confirm when reading.


2. Encourage your child to use the “secret to success” they learned in class. Our “secret” is to follow these three steps: • Look at the details in the selection. • Decide what you think will happen next, based on the details and background knowledge. • Look back and check to make sure the prediction was correct.


3. Use the following questions to promote this strategy. Ask your child: • What do you think will happen based on your information? • What clues are you using to make your prediction? • What kinds of

We also focused on the -am word family this week and incorporated our 100th day of school celebrations into our reading block as well!










































































Our vocabulary focus word this week was "patient" we watched a video about being patient!
 









Math:

The number 100 was our favorite number this week! We practiced counting to 100 by ones, fives and tens! We also studied the word one hundred during our math vocabulary writing time. We looked at a hundred piece and examined the ones and tens that create the piece. We also practiced recognizing numbers from 1-100 by finding numbers around the room, recognizing the number before matching and placing it in the correct spot on our class hundreds chart! One of our favorite activities this week was using our iPads to scan QR codes around the room. The QR code revealed a number and then we colored that number on a hundreds chart. After all of the codes had been scanned and the numbers colored in, a secret number was revealed! The number was 99 for our 99th day of school!







































Writing:

We continued to learn all about informational writing and working with the planning page. We started the week off by reviewing the planning page together and by the end of the week we were creating our own planning pages in small groups! Next week we will be writing planning pages on our own!

We also continued to create books in an app on our iPads called Book Creator. Students used their knowledge from what they learned during our last writing unit about true stories and created stories on their iPad. When they completed the illustration, the sentence and the recording on all three pages they sent the finished book to me! We shared each student’s finished book during our Writer’s Workshop sharing time.










Content:

This week was all about the number 100 for our 100th day of school! We are officially 100 days smarter, so much fun! We stretched the 100th day celebration across several days and all subjects throughout the week. A few of the highlights from the week are posted up above, but we also enjoyed the celebration during our content time as well.



A few things we enjoyed were:
  • Playing “Would You Rather” by choosing between various topics such as 100 cupcakes or 100 gumdrops, 100 snakes or 100 bumble bees...the class favorite was 100 dirty socks or 100 dollars. They thought 100 dirty socks was just so funny, and so did I! :)
  • We made “100 Days Smarter” hats that we wore all day long on our 100th day of school!
  • We wrote 100 words that we found around the room in our 100 Words Book!
  • We found numbers 1-100 around our classroom, recognized the number and matched it on the hundreds chart!
  • We took ten different snacks, counted out ten pieces of each snack and put them in ten different circles. We counted by tens and found we had 100 pieces of snack!
  • We wrote a sentence about what we will be able to do when we are 100 years old to go along with a picture of us aged to 100! Below is a video of each student aged!
  • On the 101st day of school we put 101 spots on a Dalmatian dog!










We also learned all about Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday! We focused in on how things and people might look different but a lot of times they are very similar. We used a brown and a white egg to explore the similarities and differences on both the inside and outside! We finished the day off by writing our own dreams, just like MLK!






















Extra:

Friday Fun Day! We were able to squeeze in some free play Friday afternoon. This is absolutely one of my favorite times of the week and this week did not disappoint. Seeing students learn to share, play and create makes my heart happy. Two groups of students in particular showed their creative minds and budding engineer thinking by building an exclamation point and a roller coaster! Watch out world, these kids are going to do BIG THINGS!





















PRACTICE AT HOME:
Talk about things you are experts in and come up with at least THREE facts about that topic that you could teach someone!

Next Week:
  • In reading we will focus on MAIN IDEA & KEY DETAILS.
  • In writing we will continue our unit on informational writing pieces.
  • In math we will focus ones and tens!
  • Our theme next week is all about Polar Animals
  
Important Dates/Information:

    • 2/15--President's Day-NO SCHOOL (possible make-up snow day if needed)
    • 2/26 K-2 Movie Matinee