Our new CAFE strategy this week is identifying the "setting of a story". When reading stories, we talk about the setting, or where it takes place. In most stories, the setting changes throughout the book. We discuss the different settings and why the author needed to change the setting to fit the story. I am encouraging the students to recognize the setting in books they read, TV shows they watch, movies, songs and poems. We are all about settings this week!

The first day of December has brought Christmas spirit to our classroom! We have several new decorations and fun things happening this month. We are very excited about the upcoming holiday and will be sharing our excitement each day! Happy Holidays!

Surfer of the week! Mikylah brought in a photo album with pictures of her and her family. She also brought in her cabbage patch doll!

Our second activity with the Polar Express was to cut out a train and sequence pictures from the story. We completed the activity as a class and used our CAFE strategy "retell familiar stories" to help us remember the order in which the different pictures/events happened.

We are reading and learning about the Polar Express and trains this week. Our first activity was to pretend we were going to ride a train. This train would be able to take us anywhere in the world we wanted to go. The class completed a sentence on a predictable chart "If I rode a train I would go to _______." They had really neat ideas! We will touch read these sentences using our "word by word" matching CAFE strategy this week. At the end of the week, we will write the sentences on a paper and illustrate what we wrote.

Thanksgiving Feast!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast today during lunch. I took several pictures and video from the day and will be putting them together in a video format for the blog. I will post it as soon as I have it completed. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! I know my students are very excited to share this special holiday with their family and share what they are thankful for. They are also pretty excited to eat a lot of turkey! =)

Putting a Thanksgiving Turkey puzzle together!

Meredith brought in her cat Felix today. Felix did a great job being around so many students. The class enjoyed petting Felix and hearing him purring.

We're gobbling up words for Thanksgiving! We made our own turkey's and had them gobble up words from the word families we have been studying. The class cut out 8 words and put them in a pile. I then called out a word and the class had to find the word in their pile. After finding the word, they fed it to the turkey and glued it on it's belly! They did a great job sounding out each letter to find the correct word to glue!  We have been working with the -at, -ap, -am and -an families.

Meredith, the sufer of the week, brought in her tennis racquet to show the class. She also brought in a medeal and some pictures! She told the class all about the different ways to hit a tennis ball and activities she does when she goes to tennis lessons.

We read the story Run, Turkey, Run! The story is about a turkey who is trying to hide from the farmer in order to escape being eaten for Thanksgiving dinner. After reading the story, the class completed their own sentence and illustration of where their turkey would hide from a farmer.

"My turkey will hide with tigers."

 

"My turkey will hide with tractors."

 

"My turkey will hide with blocks."

 

"My turkey will hide with cows."

"My turkey will hide in a log."