Week in Review--Winter Fun!

Reading:
This week in reading our CAFE focus was on "Author's Purpose". We learned three reasons why an author writes a story. Every time an author writes, he or she writes for a reason. As readers it is important for us to understand why a piece was written because we infer the meaning of the text based on the author's purpose for writing it. Identifying why the author wrote a text deepens our understanding for how to read and comprehend the text. Although there are many different reasons for writing, we mainly focus on the following : persuade, entertain and inform.

A few examples of these are:

• Persuade-editorials, advertisements and commercials
• Entertain-short story, poetry, drama, novels, picture books
• Inform-news articles, textbooks, biographies and non-fiction

We also focused on two word families this week. We learned all about the words in the "-ig and -og" families.

During one of my conferring sessions with two students, we used the app Popplet to compare and contrast two characters in a leveled book we were reading together. We compared a country dog vs a city dog!



During our vocabulary review lesson, we focused on the word "pattern". We practiced several different patters as a group! We really tried hard to stay together!

Morning work building words practice this week!

 

Writing:
We have jumped right in to our next unit, all about informational writing. We started the week off by creating a list of things we are experts in and we could write at least three facts to teach someone about. We continued on the week by using those topics to fill in an informational writing planning page. Students will use this planning page to create informational books. At some point, they will not need to use the planning page anymore!































Math:

In math we focused and learned about the number stories of numbers 6-9. We will continue working on the various ways to make each of these numbers throughout the year!

Our math vocabulary word this week was the word "number line". We wrote everything we know about numbers lines in our math journals on our iPads!









Content:
Winter is SNOW much fun! We learned all about how snowflakes form, where they come from, made snowmen and even got to play in pretend home made snow this week! We were hoping to get to play outside in real snow, but all of our snow melted by Tuesday of this week. Making it in class was just as fun though!

We watched the video below to learn all about how snow forms!

 

PRACTICE AT HOME:

On our next big snowfall, get out and play in the snow! Make snow angels, a snowman, build a fort, have a snowball fight....get out and enjoy the fun!

Next Week:

• In reading we will focus on PREDICT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
• In writing we will continue our unit on informational writing pieces.
• In math we will focus on the number 100!
• Our theme next week is all about the 100th Day of School

  
Important Dates/Information:

• 100th day of School celebration will be during January depending on snow days
• 2/15--President's Day-NO SCHOOL (possible make-up snow day if needed)
• 2/26 K-2 Movie Matinee



Week in Review--New Year!

Reading:

This week in reading we focused on gaining our stamina back with our Daily 5 choices! We practiced Read to Self and Work on Writing our first day back. We have two new options for our writing choice. We can write all about a specific character, the setting the character is in and what the character looks like or a special part of a book, draw a picture and write 1 or more sentences about the picture.

Our phonics focus this week was all about the H Brothers. These brothers are found in a lot of words we both read and write. These brothers are the “sh, ch, the, wh and ph” brothers. They make different sounds with a letter is combined with an h. We sang songs, brainstormed words and used our puppets to help us practice these sounds!

During our vocabulary review lesson this week, we took four of our words and acted them out. Can you guess which picture goes with which word?

Writing:

Our first week back in Writer’s Workshop consisted of reviewing, reviewing and reviewing. We focused on our jobs as writers, how we use our writing journals, writing tools and our individual writing goals. We reviewed how we are smartie spelllers and do not need to ask the teacher to spell a word. We can say the word like a turtle, stretch it like a snake and write down the sounds we hear. We also reviewed our word wall words and how we are supposed to write these words correctly each and every time. We practiced by looking at word, taking a picture of the word with our mind, writing down the word and then looking back to make sure the word was written correctly. What fun! We are ready to jump back into learning a specific type of writing next week. Our next writing unit is all about informational writing. We will be writing to TEACH someone about a topic we are experts in!

Math:

Math time also consisted of a lot of review from skills we learned before winter break. We practiced counting by ones to 100 (the goal right now will be 75), 2D and 3D shapes, addition and all of our Daily 3 math choices. We will jump right into new skills next week!

Content:

Happy New Year! What are your new year’s goals? We discussed the importance of having goals to help not only improve our own lives but to help others as well. Each student came up with a goal for 2016 that they hope to achieve! I know each and every one of them can achieve this goal, as well as so much more!

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:

Find any and all objects around your house that have an H brother in them! Write them down, spell them out, talk about the sounds and if they are heard at the beginning, middle or end of the word!

Next Week:

• In reading we will focus on the AUTHOR'S PURPOSE.
• In writing we will begin our next unit on informational writing pieces.
• In math we will focus on number stories 6-9!
• Our theme next week is all about SNOW!

  
Important Dates/Information:

• 100th day of School celebration will be during January depending on snow days
• 2/15--President's Day-NO SCHOOL (possible make-up snow day if needed)
• 2/26 K-2 Movie Matinee