Saturday, November 5, 2016

Week in Review--Seasons

Reading:

In reading this week, we learned the reading strategy “Compare and Contrast”. We practiced this skill by learning how things are the same and different. We compared cupcakes & donuts, seasons and characters! We will continue to practice this strategy into next week.

We also learned all about the -ed 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 -ed sound. We built words in the -ed family, we went on a word hunt where we chopped the sounds up in the word and found it in a pile of other -ed words and we practiced rhyming with all of the words in the -ed family.





Our vocabulary words this week went with the story Every Season. We loved learning all about the words scattered, tracks, peck, bloom, store and speckled. We did not get to do a vocabulary review this week because of the shortened week!

Our new sight words: have, will

**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:

*I did not get a video of the poem because I was not at school on Friday. I’m sure they did an outstanding job!


iPad Fun:
Reading
  • Pic Collage: We used the app Pic Collage this week and used the sticker and background tools for the first time. We picked 5 stickers from the fall/Halloween sticker choices and labeled them by typing the sounds we hear in the word. We also learned how to change the background to give our collages even more character!
  • Partners in Rhyme: Students enjoyed going back to a rhyming game we had a couple of weeks ago. They are showing huge improvements in their knowledge of rhyming words and words that do not rhyme!



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.
  • Doodle Buddy: Students scanned a QR code that took them to a voice recording where it told them a number 1-20. They then opened up the app Doodle Buddy and wrote that number and added stamps while counting to that number. When finished, they went to the next QR code, scanned it and did it again!






Writing:

Writer’s Workshop this week we continued to learn how to write a True Story. We wrote a class story focusing on writing about our field trip to the pumpkin patch from a few weeks ago. We practiced writing the “who, where and what happened” going across three pages of a book. Students were encouraged to come up with their own sentences to describe the day, but they could also use the sentence we used in our class book too. Next week, they will begin writing their own books!

We also learned a writing strategy where we are smarty spellers. To be a smarty speller you don’t ask how to spell a word, you say the word like a turtle, stretch it like a snake and write down the sounds you hear. The students are really becoming great writers and writing down the sounds they hear in words. I am so excited for where these kids are headed this year!



Math:

Our math vocabulary words this week was cube, cylinder, sphere and cone. We learned all about 3D shapes this week! We focused on how many faces, corners and what each shape looks like in the real world! We practiced creating the shapes using play-doh and singing our 3D shapes song!





Content:

This week was all about FALL!
  • Monday--We were not at school, it was FALL BREAK!
  • Tuesday--We watched a couple of videos on Pebble Go about seasons, why seasons change and more! So much information!
  • Wednesday--We read a fall book and compared fall to summer.
  • Thursday--We completed a fall book where we practiced illustrating different things that happen in the fall.
  • Friday--We went on a leaf hunt around the school and shared the leaves we found after! We discussed the way they looked, felt and more!


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 PERSEVERANCE. We learned that having perseverance is very similar to GROWTH MINDSET. We are excited to continue our learning about this concept over the next couple of weeks. We started off by watching a video with Katie and Mojo. Katie believes she is not very good at art and was feeling herself in a DIP and she could not get out of it. Her friend Mojo told her about having perseverance and it helped her get out of the dip. We talked all week about how sometimes we find ourselves wanting to give up and feeling like we are in the dip and need to get ourselves out of that dip. On Thursday, we were excited to celebrate the Chicago Cubs World Series Victory and we discussed how they could have easily given up after not winning the series for 108 years, in the series they were down 3-1 and came back to win it all, in the last game they were ahead and then the Indians came back to tie and they had to go into extra innings….we talked about how they could have felt defeated, they could have given up and quit, but they didn't! They used their perseverance and got out of the dip and WON!

A few discussion questions to talk with your child at home about this topic:
--What is "the dip"?
--Discuss an example of a time you've felt the dip (student share, parent share.) How did it feel?
--How does what we've learned about growth mindset help us get out of the dip?




PRACTICE AT HOME:
Look for 3D shapes in your house, at the store...anywhere! We have mainly focused on sphere, cylinder, cube and cone. Have your child name the shape and describe the shape using the terms “faces and corners”.
Next Week:
  • In reading we will practice comparing and contrasting.
  • In writing we will continue to write a true story!
  • In math we will learn different ways to make numbers!
  • Our theme next week is all about Nocturnal Animals.

 
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.


  • 11/10--Parent University MATH NIGHT 5:30-7:15
  • 11/23--Spirit Day Mismatched Clothes
  • 11/24-11/25--NO SCHOOL THANKSGIVING
  • 12/2--Spirit Day MME Gear