Today was STEM day! In groups, the students built a maze for their marble. They tested their marble maze, making sure that the marble made it from start to finish. We used: ●Cardboard boxes ●Pipe cleaners ●Play Dough ●Popsicle Sticks ●Marbles ●Tape We asked inquiry questions that guided us through the planning and engineering process: -What would happen if you… -What might you try instead? -What will you do next? -What materials work best? -What are some different things you could try? A couple reminders: -Reading Logs are due on Mondays and I send a new one home on Mondays in the daily folders. -Tuesday is our construction site classroom transformation. Students will engage in math, reading, and writing stations BUILDING their knowledge (: This week we:
Worked on counting forward from a number. When counting on, we put a number in our head and then counted on. For example if I ask students to count on from the number 12, they will put 12 silently in their head and count 13, 14, 15, etc. We continued to work with numbers and representing them in different ways. We also worked on finding numbers that become before and after a number. In the next few weeks we will work on sorting, counting and ordering. The ordering part of this standard can be difficult which is why this standard appears in all of our math units. To practice, students can sort items at home by color, shape, or size, count how many items are in each group, and put the groups in order from least to greatest or greatest to least. Here is a great game for this: http://www.abcya.com/counting_sorting_comparing.htm At home, please make sure students are practicing counting to 100 by 1’s and 10’s every night, to 120 when they have mastered counting to 100, and practicing writing their numbers 0-20. (Fun ways of writing numbers can be with chalk outside, in sand or shaving cream, on a whiteboard, etc.) When students have mastered this, you can practice skip counting by 2, 3, 4, etc. and discuss odd and even numbers. - In writer’s workshop we are near the end of our first narrative unit of study. We will discuss how to edit a piece that we plan on sharing with the class (students will share in a writing celebration in the next few weeks). We will learn how writers re-read their stories and think about what they can do from everything they know about good writing to make their work the best it can be. We discussed how writers try to spell their words, they reread each word to make sure it looks right, then they may even need to change it to make it more readable. We reviewed “When we are done we have just begun” and how to write a TRUE story We have been focusing on adding more details to our pictures-not just drawing pictures that are floating in the middle of the page. We will also continue to work on incorporating how our characters felt and add speech bubbles to our pictures too. What you can do at home: have students practice sounding out words and writing down the sounds they hear on paper and draw pictures with details and label their pictures. You can also remind students that when writing, the first letter in a sentence is uppercase and the rest is lower case, there are finger spaces between words, and periods at the end of sentences. We will continue to work on this in class. - In reading, Students will continue reading fiction (old favorite storybooks) books from their book bins independently and with a partner and will also continue to read learn about the world books. We will focus on how “Readers Learn From Books, Too” and “We are Storybook Readers.” (Please see below). Our minilessons this past week have been about how we talk more and more like the characters, look at the pictures and words, etc. What you can do at home: Read every night like you are working with a partner (sit side by side, have a book in the middle, read back and forth, etc.) and ask your child questions about what she/he is reading about. For students who need to work on letters and letter sounds, you can have students find letters around the house and ask them what sounds they make. -In social studies, we have been talking about community helpers and how they are similar/different in other communities including other countries around the world. We learned that police officers in England called “Bobbies." (England is our country of study for International Day) We will continue to discuss students’ role as a citizen in their community and the different roles in a community. We will also continue to add the learner profile words (communicator, thinker, and principled) as well as key concepts (function, connection, and responsibility) to our daily vocabulary. What you can do at home: Discuss the following: Why is it important to be a good citizen? What is a community? What is a community helper? What role do I play in a community?
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About Me
This is my seventh year at HFE. I love teaching, reading, writing, traveling, and sushi Archives
April 2021
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