Week in Review--American Symbols & Presidents

Reading:

This week was focused around the reading strategy “Read With Expression”. Reading the text smoothly and with expression is a Common Core State Standard for all grade levels. When I teach this strategy I focus on teaching the kids that when they read, they should sound like a “story teller”. When you read a story out loud to others, you want to sound like a storyteller and not boring, too quiet or like a robot. Of course, if the character is a robot then that would be perfect! Recording a student’s reading of a text is an easy way for them to hear themselves as a reader. The student can read the text into a recording device and then listen to themselves. The student can record over his or her voice if they feel they can do a better job of conveying the author’s meaning or feeling. By listening to themselves, they will begin to understand how to better adjust their voice to convey the appropriate meaning and feeling.

This week we also focused on the “-it and -in” word families. We created word family lists, played a game called a word hunt and added the new words into our Friday game of SNAP!

 

 

 

 

Our vocabulary words this week were:

• peered
• glided
• paddle
• canoe
• dew
• crew

We enjoyed learning about these words and created one page of a book with our iPad partner. We used three specific words “peered, glided, paddle” and the pairs took a picture of the word and then acted the word out in a video. A few of the students told the definition while acting it out and others just acted it out. A few also included a drawing of the word! We put the pages together, watch the video below!

 

 POEM OF THE WEEK (I recorded it upside down, so sorry!)

 

 

 

Writing:

We are continuing to work on informational writing. This week we started off the week by learning what words always get a capital letter. We focused on names of people, names of places, names of pets, holidays, days of the week, months of the year and the word “I” are always capitalized.

 

We continued on the rest of the week by looking at mentor non-fiction texts to learn how an author writes informational pieces. We took facts that we learned from the books we read and put them into our informational books about the topic. We are not all finished with the books, but when we are finished we will publish them in Book Creator!

 

 

 

 

Math:

We continued to focus on subtraction this week. We learned how we can use a number line and a drawing to help solve subtraction problems. We practiced as a group this week using these two strategies and will put them into choices next week to practice on our own, with a partner and using the iPad.

Our math vocabulary word(s) this week focused on subtraction. They were “subtract” and “minus”. We discussed the words, then we wrote and drew pictures that showed what the words mean in our math journals. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Content:

This week was all about American Symbols and Presidents. We took each day this week to learn about a different important symbol to our country. We learned about our American Flag, the Liberty Bell, the Bald Eagle and Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I loved seeing how excited the students were to hear about the importance of each symbol and the lives of both Presidents.

 

 

 

 

For morning work this week students scanned QR codes that connected to videos teaching about American Symbols, Washington and Lincoln. After they watched a video, they went to the app Doodle Buddy and drew a picture about something they learned from the video.

 

 

We also took pictures pretending to be both of the two important Presidents that we studied this week and we wrote a one page writing about what we would do if we were the President. Watch the video below!

If I Were President...

 

 

 

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Practice reading with AND without expression. Have your child determine the level of your expression. We used a thumbs up for good expression, thumbs sideways for "so-so" and thumbs down for not so great expression. They were great at helping me with my reading this week! Then, turn the tables and your child practice reading a favorite book with good expression! 

Next Week:

• In reading we will focus on Recognize Cause & Effect.
• In writing we will continue our unit on informational writing pieces.
• In math we will continue to focus on Greater Than, Less Than.
• Our theme next week is all about Fairy Tales.

  
Important Dates/Information:

 
• 2/25 ABC's of Ag Field Trip to McCutcheon High School (AM only)


• 2/26 Fairy Tale Ball (dress like your favorite fairy tale character or super hero)


• 2/26 K-2 Movie Matinee

• 3/15 and 3/17 Parent/Teacher Conferences (please return your day/time requests ASAP)

• 3/ 21-3/25 NO SCHOOL SPRING BREAK





Week in Review--Valentine's Day

Writing:

We continued to work on informational writing this week. We also focused on adding in verbs, labels and text features! Adding in these things helps the reader learn more information about the topic we are writing about. Labels are found in the illustration and can point to parts that we are teaching in the setnences below, as well as other important thigns included in the picture that is not included in the writing. Text features are usually seen in the writing, but can also be added to the picture to add details. Text features have writers underline special words, make them BOLD and BIG, wiggly, bubble letters, different colors and more! As soon as we talked about adding these text features to our writing, so many students began to add them in their sentences!

We continued to follow the process where students fill out a planning sheet then turn those ideas into sentences in a book and publish their stories in Book Creator. Below are a few videos of published books!

Reading:

This week we focused on the reading strategy “Back Up and Reread”. Have you ever been reading a book, gotten to the end of a page and realized you didn't remember anything you just read? Have you started over two or three times before actually making yourself concentrate on what you are reading. This happens to readers of all ages. Why? It could be due to a lack of interest (I am remembering many college textbooks now), not enough background knowledge, or perhaps unfamiliar vocabulary. Maybe something on our mind keeps crowding in. No matter what the reason, there is only one thing we can do to get full meaning out of what we are reading. We need to back up and reread and then check for understanding again. These two reading strategies often go hand in hand. After introducing your students to the reading strategy Check for Understanding, use the strategy Back Up and Reread to aid in understanding what may have been missed the first time. Once you have introduced this strategy, follow up by sending the Parent Pipeline home so parents can support this strategy use at home.

This week we also focused on the “-un and -an” word families. We created word family lists, played a game called a word hunt and added the new words into our Friday game of SNAP!

Our vocabulary words this week were:

• creaks
• howling
• path
• hare
• hinge
• sways

We enjoyed learning about these words and created one page of a book with a group of our friends. We worked together to decide who would take the picture of the vocabulary word, who would be recorded explaining the definition and who would draw a picture of the word. They worked so well together and divided up the work so nicely! I was very impressed! We put the pages together, watch the video below!

 

 

 

Math:

We focused on subtraction this week. We learned about a special guy named “Linus the Minus” who likes to take things away. Whenever we see him in a math problem he is taking numbers away and the answer will always be less. We practiced subtraction with pictures and math tools. We will continue next week by working with subtracting with number lines and drawing a picture to help see the numbers/items go away.

We had a new choice added to Math by Myself this week. This choice practices subtraction and is called “Smash It”. Students read a subtraction problem and create play-doh balls for the first number in the problem. The second number then tells the student how many of the balls they get to “smash” and then they write the answer down! We have found subtracting is so much fun when you get to smash the play-doh down!

Our math vocabulary word(s) this week focused on height. They were longer and shorter. We discussed the words, then we wrote and drew pictures that showed what the words mean in our math journals.



 

 

Content:

This week was all about Valentine’s Day. We created special Valentine Cards using the app Pic Collage, we created a class book using Book Creator about things we love, talked about kindness and celebrated at the end of the week with our Valentine’s Party. We created our own canisters to receive Valentine’s from our friends and enjoyed decorating cookies!



 

PRACTICE AT HOME:

When looking in books, newspapers, menus and more try to find TEXT FEATURES!.

Next Week:

• In reading we will focus on Read with Expression.
• In writing we will continue our unit on informational writing pieces.
• In math we will continue to focus Son UBTRACTION.
• Our theme next week is all American symbols and Presidents.

  
Important Dates/Information:

• 2/15--President's Day-NO SCHOOL
• 2/18--Family Fitness Frenzy at MME 6:00PM
• 2/25 ABC's of Ag Field Trip to McCutcheon High School
• 2/26 Fairy Tale Ball (dress like your favorite fairy tale character or super hero)
• 2/26 K-2 Movie Matinee