Reading:
In reading this week, we learning all about the strategy “Predict What Will Happen and Then Confirm”. 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.
To kick off our learning of this week’s word families (that’s right we now have TWO word families), we watched a video that had us reading and learning new words that end with the -ut and -ug sounds. We built words in the -ut and -un families, we went on a word hunt where we chopped the sounds up in the word and found it in a pile of other -ut and -ug words and we practiced rhyming with all of the words in each family.
Our vocabulary words this week went with the story Red Eyes, Blue Feathers. We loved learning all about the words sly, scent, communicate, temperature, survive and mood. Later in the week we reviewed the word
Our new sight words: for, him
**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:
**Due to the NWEA middle of the year benchmark testing, we did not have iPad choice this week. Our iPads were bundled up with the other kindergarten classes so all students could have an iPad to take the test at the same time in each class. We will pick back up with our iPad choices next week! We also are getting 5 new iPads to add to our classroom and that will put us at a half a class set! We are so excited!
Writing:
Writer’s Workshop this week, we continued to practice writing and filling in the planning/idea page that goes with our information writing unit. We completed one page together as a class to make that three total that we did together and then on Tuesday, students were off on their own writing their own pages about a topic they are experts in! They have to know at least three different facts about the topic in order to be considered an expert. We continued the rest of the week perfecting filling out the planning page. We will work next week on transferring the planning page to a book!
Math:
Math this week we learned all about the vocabulary term minus. We were introduced to a friend of Gus the Plus named Linus the Minus. We learned that he likes to take things away from math problems. Whenever we see or hear his symbol/name we know that we are taking away! We continued through the rest of the week practicing subtraction. We learned a new game for Math by Myself called “Smash It”. The idea of this game has students create Play-doh balls according to the subtraction problem and smash the correct number of balls down that the problem says to take away. Students write the answer on the answer page when finished and move on to the next problem. For the rest of the week practicing subtraction we used our iPads and learned how to subtract using the app Doodle Buddy and used our ten frame paddles too!
Content:
This week was all about Martin Luther King Jr and Polar Animals!
- Monday--We learned about who Martin Luther King Jr. was and why he was so important. We then completed our own dream pages!
- Tuesday--We read a small book introducing us to several types of arctic animals!.
- Wednesday--We read a story about polar bears.
- Thursday--We completed a story sequence page that went with the story we read the day before.
- Friday--We completed our second STEM challenge! Our task was to create a snow den for a polar animal using toothpicks and various sizes of marshmallows. We also tested out whether having "blubber" on our body keeps us warmer than having nothing. We put our hand in a bag of blubber and put it in a bowl of ice water and our hand that wasn't in the blubber and we compared which one felt warmer. We decided we would much rather have the blubber if we were a polar animal!
Click on the link below to see the students sharing their STEM challenges!
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 continuing our learning about FRIENDSHIP. We started the week off by completing a couple more of our friendship task cards that gave us a situation that friends might encounter and we discussed how we would handle it. We also read a story written by Mo Willems, one of our favorite authors that was about sharing with our friends. We finished the week by discussing how our words affect our friends. We felt sand paper and cotton balls and learned that we want our words to feel more like cotton balls towards others and not sand paper. At the end of the week we worked on showing our friendship skills towards others. Every time a skill was caught or recognized that student(s) received a piece of paper chain to add to our Friendship Chain. Our goal was to have so many students showing friendship that our chain would go from the top of the door and touch the ground by the end of the week. And we did it!
A few discussion questions to talk with your child at home about this topic:
-What is one thing you can do at school to be a good friend?
-What is something you would like for a friend to do for you?
-What is something you love and enjoy doing with your friends?.
PRACTICE AT HOME:
Have your child tell you about our STEM challenge on Friday. Ask them any challenges or successes they had while working on building the arctic animal den. It was such a fun experiene and the laughter, conversation and teamwork was an absolute teaching WIN to witness!
Next Week:
- In reading we will focus on “Main Idea and Supporting Details”.
- In writing we will continue to write Information Writing.
- In math we will continue working on subtraction!
- Our theme next week is all about the 100th day of school!
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.
- 1/23--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
