Week in Review--Snow!

Reading:

In reading this week, we learning all about the “Author’s Purpose”. We learned that when an author writes it’s for a specific reason. We put these options into three categories with the word “PIE”. Author’s write to “persuade”, “inform” and to “entertain”. We read several books and other various writing this week and discussed the purpose for that writing. We explained why an author would choose to write that particular pieces and if their purpose worked.

We also learned all about the H Brothers family. The brothers are “sh, wh, th, ch”. We sang songs to go with every H Brother, we made puppets to go with each brother and brainstormed a list of words that have that specific brother’s letters and sounds in the word.

Our vocabulary words this week went with the story The Hat. We loved learning all about the words clothesline, startled, perked, woolen, cackled and snorted. Later in the week we reviewed the word “clothesline” by taking our hats and gloves and pretending to wash them like they did before washer and dryers and hung them on a clothesline in our classroom to dry out until recess!

Our new sight words: here, said

Sneak peak into our classroom during our reading block. Students are working on Daily 5 choices, iPad task all while enjoying our flexible seating options throughout the classroom!

Go Noodle is a website where we get our wiggles out! Below is a video of the class having fun during the "secret handshakes" video!

**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

• Book Creator: We created our own snow stories using book creator this week. The stories could be about things we know about snow, a time we have played in the snow or anything at all that has to do with snow. The only requirement for the stories were each student had to have an illustration, sentence and recording. Once the book was finished, the book was saved to the iPad and uploaded to Google Classroom.
• Word Family App: We practiced building, reading and sorting various word family words using a word family app.
• Reading Eggs/QR Books: Third round all students completed lessons in Reading Eggs and/or listened to stories on “tape” using QR codes inside picture books.

**Below are a few examples of stories students created in Book Creator this week:

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.
• Moose Math: We practiced subitizing and adding and subtracting while subtizing this week using this app!

Writing:

Writer’s Workshop this week, we began our second writing unit! This unit focuses on writing an informational writing. We learned how we, even at five years old, are already experts at a lot of things. We can use our knowledge from those things to teach others about a topic we know a lot about. We will continue to learn and write in this unit for the next several weeks. This week we created a “Class Experts” chart where we wrote down ideas of what we are experts in. We have to know at least three facts about a topic in order to be an expert and write about the topic. We used that chart to start our first planning page as well this week. We wrote all three things we know about fish as a class and will continue to practice the planning page before writing in books.

Math:

Math this week we learned all about the vocabulary terms greater than, less than and equal to. We compared objects, numbers and more by using these terms throughout the week. We used our class rekenrek’s, math tools and even compared numbers in a Google Slide using the symbols all to show differences between greater than, less than and equal to!

We have a new choice at Math with Someone called “towers”. This game is SO much fun. The partners roll a dice and then build up that many cubes. After building their towers, they compare to see which one is “greater” and it gets to knock down the smaller tower.

Content:

This week was all about WINTER AND SNOW!

• Monday--We talked about all of the things we know about snow.
• Tuesday--We watched a video about how snowflakes are made.  
• Wednesday--We created our own snowmen using 3 circles.
• Thursday--We made our own snow using conditioner and baking soda.
• Friday--We took the snow we made the day before and explored with it! We made snowmen, letters, numbers and more!

During Free Play Friday time last week, we didn't have as much time as we usually do. So we did not get out all of our games and toys to explore. Instead, we were allowed to draw and do whatever we want on the white boards! See below how much fun it was!

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 FRIENDSHIP. We started the week off by reading a story called Stick and Stone. In this story, two friends stick up for one another when the other one is struggling or being picked on by someone else. We talked about how we would feel if someone was picking on us and what a friend could do to help that situation. We continued throughout the week by talking about and watching videos involving friendship. We answered friendship task cards and reflected on ourselves and how we react with our friends in different situations. We finished the week by reading a story called Enemy Pie.

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

-When was a time you and a friend had a conflict? How did you resolve it?

-How is one way you can make a friend feel special?

-Name a time you encouraged someone else to do something they didn’t think they could do.  

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Have your child tell you something they are an “expert” in and at least 3 facts they know about that topic. Be sure that the facts are not opinions, they have to be three true things they know. This will help in our writing unit!

Next Week:

• In reading we will focus on “Predict What Happens Next”.
• In writing we will continue to write Information Writing.
• In math we will begin working on subtraction!
• Our theme next week is all about Polar Bears!

 

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.

• 1/16--MLK Day...We HAVE SCHOOL
• 1/23--100th Day of School! Be sure to check the orange half piece of paper that came home on Friday!
• 2/9--Parent University 5:45-7:30PM
• 2/20--President’s Day NO SCHOOL (make-up snow day if needed)
• 3/3--Movie Night K-2
• 3/10--End of 3rd Nine Weeks
• 3/13-3/17--Parent Teacher Conferences
• 3/27-3/31--Spring Break NO SCHOOL