Week of February 22 -26, 2010

The highlight of our week was going to the computer lab on Monday! We will be using it every Monday to work on a variety of projects and skills. In Writer's Workshop we finished writing How-To stories and are moving on to writing All-About stories that will include a How-To page in it. This works in nicely with our Famous American project where students will write all about the famous American they chose. In Reader's Workshop we continue to look for features of non-fiction book and have discovered how handy a table of contents, index and glossary are. In Math we finished Unit $ and jumped ahead to Unit 8 which focuses on skip counting by two's (sending in socks is still OK!) five's and tens. These skills translate well as we are also practicing counting coins that involve those skills.

Pennies for Patients Update: We've raised just a few pennies short of $64.00 and it was great fun counting it! Please keep sending in your coins!

The second part of the password is snacks. The other part is on Blackboard. Please write both passwords on a piece of paper and send with your child.

Word Study Games

We have lots of fun playing games to learn our word study words each week. A popular one this week was "Draw the Snowman." It is similar to the game "Hangman". One student chooses a word for his partner to guess. He writes the number of spaces for the letters in the word and then his partner guesses the letters. If the letter is in the word, it goes in the appropriate blank. If not, the recorder draws one part of the snowman. You can try this at home, too!

Math Surveys

In Math Workshop we have been taking class surveys to collect data to use and analyze for practicing our math skills. Every morning when the students come to the classroom they have a question (or survey) to answer that has two choices. Once everyone has answered, we look at the data and determine if everyone answered the question; which answer got the most or least responses, etc. We also had fun this week making up our own surveys this week and asking our classmates to answer them.

Famous Americans Project

In Social Studies we have been learning about famous Americans such as George Washington Carver, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We know that there are many more famous Americans than those so we are all choosing one person to study. We are looking for facts about our chosen person and will use the Mac Lab to record some information as well as find a picture of our Famous American.

Computer Lab

On Monday we went to the Mac Computer Lab. We used this time to remember the rules we follow while in the lab and to get acclimated to the Macs. We will use the Mac Lab to work on our Famous American projects.

Week of February15-19, 2010

This was a week of celebrations! After celebrating President's Day away from school we were all very excited to see each other after missing a full week of school because of our double blizzards. We celebrated Chinese New Year by reading books about the festival and making tan gram puzzles. We also had fun counting and doing addition problems in Chinese. At the end of the week we celebrated Valentine's with a lovely party coordinated by Allie Wrigley (Many thanks!). In between celebrations, we continued to read non-fiction books and learn about the distinctive features about them during Reader's Workshop. We're refining our writing skills with How-To stories in Writer's Workshop and chose the poem that will be published in this year's Poetry Journal. In Math Workshop we have been taking and making surveys and writing equations to explain their results. We finished our study of George Washington Carver in social studies and will continue our study of Famous Americans for a few more weeks.

The second part of the password is Americans. The first part is on Blackboard. Please write both words on a piece of paper and send in with your child for a surprise!

Happy Valentine's Day!

It is never too late to celebrate LOVE! Our Valentine's Party (a week later than planned because of the snow) was a great success thanks to Allie Wrigley's fabulous party-planning skills. We decorated cookies, made bookmarks, a Valentine keepsake, and candy necklaces and did fun word searches and puzzles. The highlight of the party was a game of BINGO where everyone was a winner and a delicious and healthy snack. Many thanks to everyone who participated in the party by sending in party things, helping your children make Valentines and coming to the party.

Plunky Branch and Oneness

As part of our celebration of Black History Month, we joined the entire school for an interactive and entertaining performance of jazz and blues music by James Plunky Branch and Oneness. Plunky is a musician and music teacher who travels the country teaching children about the origins of jazz and blues and instruments that are included in his band. He had us up out of our seats and dancing to familiar tunes as well as songs that were new to us.

Week of February 1 - 5, 2010

It was a short week due to the two snow days. We started some new units which all focus on non-fiction. In writing we wrote step-by-step "How To" stories. We learned to ski, snowboard, do front and back flips in the swimming pool and how to make an omelet, among other fun things. We are reading non-fiction books during Reader's Workshop and learning about the different features that non-fiction books have such as photographs, diagrams, maps and charts. We began our "Famous Americans" social studies unit by learning about the life of George Washington Carver. Our Math Unit is described below.

Oh No!

We were swallowed by a boa constrictor this week! That was the privilege that your child got if they told me the correct password. Thanks for your efforts in reading our blog and Blackboard. "Boa Constrictor" is a poem by beloved poet Shel Silverstein. In the poem a boa constrictor swallows you up! The children love this!!

The password for this week is a little different: you need to write it down (or have your child write) on a piece of paper with your child's name on it. The first half of the password is on Blackboard. Here's the second half: bunny.

What's My Rule?

In math this week, we started a new unit called "What Would You Rather Be?" which addresses ways to sort objects by attributes and interpret the results of a data investigation. The game, "What's My Rule?" is a fun way for children to practice sorting by one attribute and also determining the attribute that another person used to sort. We used buttons, shells, plastic animals and geometric shapes to practice for this game. WE collect and record data every day with a question that the children answer as part of their morning routine when they arrive in the classroom. Examples of questions include "Do you prefer to take a shower or a bath?" Do you brush your teeth before you put on your pajamas or after?" Are you right-handed or left-handed?" Once we have our data we can practice all kinds of math skills such as adding numbers together, seeing how much more or lessone number is than the other, and writing equations.