Highlights from Week 8!

I apologize for being a couple days late on our weekly update! Last week, we began lots of new units and routines. Here are some of the following highlights from the week (as well as an update about the field trip to the Center for Wooden Boats)!

Highlights:
-We began our realistic fiction writing unit and spent the week brainstorming and prewriting. We developed our characters, their personalities and stuggles throughout the story.
-In science, we continued observing our plants after we used our bee sticks to pollinate them - we will look for the pods that will develop over the next several days.
-We are well into our math unit on Multiplication and Division: we also started working on problem solving in math with word problems!
-Book Clubs have started! Students met in their groups and discussed the group norms: rules that will be followed by each member. Students are taking the responsibility of reading together, compromising, and having a deep book discussion.
-Here are the overdue pictures from our field trip!

Highlights from Week 7!

We just got back from our field trip to the Center for Wooden Boats and it was a blast! Thank you to the chaperones who came with us and helped paddle in our boats - it was so helpful and exciting to have you join us. I will update again with pictures in a few days along with some students posts about our trip. We also just had our Open House last night and had a great turnout! Thank you to all of the families who came and got to see all the things that have been happening in our classroom. I hope you also got to snap a few pictures at our photo booth station - I will get those pictures printed and sent out as soon as possible.

Highlights:
-We just finished our Personal Narrative writing unit and had our celebration on Thursday. Look below for some pictures from the gallery walk that we did. Students were able to read each others' published writing and leave compliments. On Monday, we will begin our new writing unit on Realistic Fiction!
-In science this week, we dissected flowers and looked carefully at all of the parts and functions.
-Our multiplication/division unit in math launched this week as well. Students are asked to practice their multiplication facts so that ALL are memorized!
-We are digging deeper into analyzing characters from the books that we are reading. We used different graphic organizers to look at the inner thoughts of our characters and comparing and contrasting them with other characters. We will continue this work next week.
-A great website for practice keyboarding skills is Dance Mat Typing. Please use this website to practice typing skills!
-I will be sending out information for Volunteer Spot: a website that helps me get supplies needed for different activities and crafts. Please check this out if you are able to contribute in any way! Thank you!

Highlights from Week 6!

In this short week, we had many things happening! We finished MAP testing and will test one more time in the spring - if you would like to know your child's score, we can discuss it at our conference coming up next month. Yesterday, we had a guest visitor/teacher and also Jesse's father, Doug, come and share about his knowledge of bees. We have been studying plant growth, pollination, and the structure of a bee. He came to show us his bee suit that he wears when he collects the honey in their backyard. Students were able to ask LOTS of questions and even sample some pure honey! Check out the picture below of Doug showing us his suit and doing a Q&A.

Highlights:
-Students chose their personal narrative draft that they want to revise, edit, and publish in the following week. We will hopefully have some published or in the publishing stage when parents come for Open House.
-As mentioned before, we learned about bees this week. Our plants have flowers budding and we are learning about how important bees are in the pollination process. We made a bee stick and have table groups of "bee condos" - please ask your child about this!
-We took our unit test on Addition & Subtraction today. I will grade and return the tests early next week. Our next unit will start on Monday and it is: Meaning of Multiplication & Division.
-In Readers Workshop, we worked on asking questions while reading and did a fun inferencing activity using a Pixar short film - it was a lot of fun!
-PLEASE turn in your field trip form as soon as possible. I still have many that have not turned in their forms.

Highlights from Week 5!

We had an extra busy week! Today alone we had MAP testing (math), picture day, spelling tests, Buddy art time, and a special assignment from Mr. Moriarty, our PE teacher. He has chosen our class to collect some data and a packet will go home today. It will be to keep a pedometer for a few days and record how many steps were taken on those days. There is information in the packet, a parent survey, and a permission form in there. Please return it as soon as the four days are up (you can choose which four, but the packet is due on Thursday). Here are some highlights from the week:

Highlights:
-Starting next week, I will be sending home a blue half sheet of paper to students who do not finish their work plans by Friday. The expectation is that every students completes their work, because I differentiate and make sure that it is at their level. Students will write their plan for how they will make up the work, whether it is by missing recess to complete it in class, or taking it home as additional homework.
-We began drafting our personal narratives (small moments) and learned about how to start a story to grab the attention of the readers.
-Our plants are really growing tall! Next week, we will observe the buds and flower that are starting to grow - we will also look at bees and how animals and plants are interdependent.
-We continued our math unit on: Addition & Subtraction, and the unit test will be on Thursday (October 10th).
-In Readers Workshop, we are looking into reading strategies such as visualizing, making connections, and making predictions. As students read, they are responding to the text using these strategies. Students record in their Readers Notebooks their thinking and response to text.
-If you haven't turned in your field trip form, please do so immediately!
-We will have another field trip in November related to our plant science unit - be on the lookout for that field trip form as well!

Have a great weekend! :)