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.