Week of January 25 - 29, 2010

We actually had a full week of school with no early dismissals, snow days or holidays! In Writer's Workshop we finalized our poems for our Poetry Journal and chose one to publish. Our Poetry Publishing Party on Friday was a grand finale for our Poetry Unit. Next week we will begin our non-fiction wirting unit with a focus on writing about famous Americans. In Reader's Workshop the highlight was opening our listening station. We heard "The Mitten" which includes the robust vocabulary words that we worked on this week. We finished up math unit 3: "Solving Story Problems" and are moving onto unit 4: "What Would You Rather Be?" This unit focuses on sorting strategies according to different attributes and collecting, representing and comparing data. Remember that you can go on line to learn more about our math program at pearsonsuccess.net. We finished our science unit on matter with hot chocolate and bubbles. Can you guess which matter we were learning about? If not, ask your child! Next week we will begin our social studies unit called "History and Famous Americans." This will involve the fun "Hero Project" that your child will be working on at school and at home.

Thanks for visiting your child's classroom blog. Your child will get an extra privilege in the classroom because of your efforts. Tell your child to tell me this week's password: blog.

Poetry Publishing Party

Our Poetry Publishing Party was well attended by parents and teachers. It was great fun to share our poetry journals with all who were present. We had a nice surprise after the party when our principal arrived with special pencils that say "I Love to Write." We do!

Horton Hatches a New Buddy

Our new community book is an old favorite, Horton Hatches an Egg. We read it with our buddies and then had the opportunity to discuss what it means to be responsible and faithful just like Horton. We got our creative juices flowing with the prompt to cross two animals (just like Horton's elephant and Mayzie's bird) to come up with a brand new animal. We created lots of new friends such as a giraffigator, dolphippo and a dinomonkey, among others!

Weeks of January 11 - 22, 2010

We started writing poetry at the beginning of last week and are enjoying this creative process. We have been using different formats such an acrostic poem and text innovations to reach our inner poets! We are learning about nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs and how to put them together in clever ways, The children have a great sense of rhythm and are catching on brilliantly. We will share our poems with parents next week at our Publishing Party. In math we continued our study of comparing numbers and addition and subtraction. Also, we are beginning to look at a hundreds chart and count large quantities of numbers while finding patterns as we count. We began a new science unit on matter and will be experimenting with solids, liquids and gases in the coming week.

How high can you write?

In Math Workshop we have been counting lots of things with an emphasis on keeping track of counting large quantities and different strategies to use. We also challenged ourselves to see how many numbers we could write starting at 0, We'll keep adding to our number tapes next week too!

Pajama Day!

It was fun to wear our pajamas to school as part of a Spirit Day for the whole school. Even though we were in our pj's we still worked and played hard! We even got to see a little snow!

Experts at Estimating

Thanks to classmates Ryan and Devin, our class won a mancala game for getting the closest estimate for the schoolwide estimation jar on Math Day. Our weekly practice of estimating really paid off for us!

Math Day!

Math Day was great fun! Parents came to the classroom and we taught them three math games that we have been learning to help us with our subtraction skills: How Many am I Hiding?, Five in a Row, and Roll and Record. A packet went home with each child that day that includes directions for these games as well as others that we have played or will play in class this year.

Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.

With the upcoming Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday we learned about King's life and the impact he has had on our lives today. We read books and "watched" a book about his life on Bookflix. With Black History Month coming in February we will continue to learn about famous black Americans that helped change our history!

Week of January 4 - 8, 2010

Happy New Year! It was great to see the children again after a long, restful break. We jumped right back into our Writer's Workshop by writing some New Year's Resolutions. In Reader's Workshop we began a new author study on Ezra Jack Keats and used his classic The Snowy Day to talk about how good readers make connections with the stories we read. Everyone was able to relate to this favorite story after our big snow! In Math Workshop we began focusing on subtraction skills and how to use appropriate symbols in our number sentences. A highlight of our week was a trip to the planetarium and the beginning of our science unit on the earth and space system.

Science Unit:: Earth and Space Systems

Our visit to Arlington's planetarium was a nice segue into our study of the earth and the sun. We learned many facts about the sun and focused on how the earth revolves around the sun and at the same time is rotating on its axis. We used flashlights and globes to help us understand these concepts and made night and day on our globes.

It's OK to Use our Fingers!

We've been practicing our addition and subtraction skills by telling number stories, playing games and working out problems in our workbooks. Children use all kinds of manipulatives to help them add and subtract numbers--including their fingers!

Week of December 14-18, 2009

This week in Reader's Workshop we began using a "Reading Ticket" to move us toward working more independently and making some choices about how to use our reading time. Each day students must complete their "Have To's" which include reading just right books and word study. They must also complete the "Once-a-Weekers" which include activities such as reading the word wall, reviewing our robust vocabulary words and analyzing our weather graph. They also have "Choices" which include a variety of activities to support their reading skills and integrate other subject areas. The "Reading Ticket" allows students to work at their own pace and level while practicing time management skills. Two highlights of our week were visiting with our 5th grade buddies and preparing for our Cultural Project and Feast which are described below.

Cultural Project and Feast

Our Cultural Project and Feast was a terrific way to celebrate the children's hard work on researching a country from their cultural heritage and presenting it to their classmates and parents. Everyone did an excellent job and the food was delicious. See the post on 12-13-09 for more specifics about the project. Little did we know that this would also be our last celebration of 2009 as we received 2 feet of snow the next day and the few days we had left before winter break were canceled.

5th Grade Buddies Again!

We had another fun time with our 5th grade buddies! We read Armadillo Tattletales which is one of our "community books." Every classroom gets a collection of these community books each year that help us talk about ways to respect each other and to get along. In this particular book, we learned how important it is not to eavesdrop on people's conversations or to gossip. It is also a folktale about why armadillo's ears are so small. After Ms. Lombardi read us the story, we worked with our buddies to make posters to hang in the school halls to encourage others to read the story.