**The students returned from their spring break with lots of stories about their travels and time with family. Whether they remained in the area or traveled to another state or country, they had much to tell. We had travel journals shared from the Chicago area, Florida, Wisconsin Dells, Indiana, Mexico, The Dominican Republic, The Upper Peninsula and New Mexico to name a few. The students loved locating places on our state and world maps.
**Keep sending in BOXES of all kinds including GIANT ONES and other cool things for our space station projects. Empty toilet paper tubes and paper towel tubes are needed too. We could still use a couple of GIANT BOXES that you can climb in. We hope to collect everything this week. The design, construction and detailing will take place the week of April 18th-22nd. We will need some hot glue volunteers during our detailing stage. Stay tuned!
**Our Spelling Bee reps, LAUREN and ZADIE and our alternate, JULIET are excited to participate in the K-2 Spelling Bee which will be held on Wednesday, April 13th beginning at 11:00 am. We will be cheering them on. Feel free to come and join us in the auditorium.
**The students have begun using a new app on their iPad called Keyboarding Without Tears. It is the companion to our Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. We will also be using the program on the computers in the lab. The lessons are very short--no more then 10 minutes. Pre-keyboarding skills--including hand position, posture and finger use, key identification (home row and bottom row) and number keys will be featured in the lessons. We had our first 2 lessons this past week. We will have another 2 this week and then I will send home the information for home practice.
**Don't forget to send back your Report Card Envelopes. Just the envelopes! We have one more report card in June.
**Our Student Council Reps, Hattie and Lauren were excited to tell the class about their latest fundraiser---All School DANCE-A-THON that will be held on Saturday, April 30th. More info is coming!!!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lesson on what it means to be RESPECTFUL. Stories, acting and picture examples sparked much discussion and suggestion.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking and Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer posed the question, "What is the most important number in the world?" Some very interesting answers!!!!! He read a story called, "100 Angry Ants." Next week more stories in preparation for a projects about numbers.
This week:
It was all about our shadow poses! Each student posed with their shadow. We will use this photos for our beginning paragraph writing project next week. The students also discovered our potatoes were showing signs of sprouting!!! The students conducted another experiment on types of shadows and we began an inquiry about the sun. We also saw all the cool pictures taken by the volunteers on our field trip to the museum. Way cool!! The students chose one of the pics and wrote and illustrated about it. Station day activities included creating 3D structures using marshmallows and toothpicks, constructing 2D rockets, solving addition problems in rocket math and playing the addition and subtraction game "4 in a row."
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They began building background knowledge about how a tree grows. The students talked about Oak Park and how many trees they see daily. We used our Tree Finder book to look at Oak and other types of trees in our area. Students recognized leaves of the Oak, Ginko and Maple trees. The students understood that the tree is a plant that begins with a seed and takes many years to grow. Students listened to the Big Book story, "Oak Trees." They noted the book was nonfiction or informational. The students responded that they had seen acorns and some students even collected them. Sight words for this week are little and said. Our target sounds are short u and ck. We took a look at the use of quotation marks to tell us who is talking in the story. Students retold the Big Book story in their own words to a partner thinking about the sequence or order. Students reviewed the question words who, what, where, when, why and how. They then took turns verbally asking a question about the story and having their partner answer the question. Students practiced reading aloud the story "A Little Acorn." They worked on fluency with support from their partner. Robust vocabulary this week included GROW, CONCEITED, EQUAL, CHARMING. We began work on common core standards of word choice, describing a characters experience and comparing 2 characters from two different texts. Workstation activities included leveled reader, fluency checks, discussion on characters in the texts and comparing the actions of the characters looking for similarities, writing an informational piece of what you know about trees, word family spin and color, activities on ck words, sentence building, working on word choice in a text, roll and read, writing an opinion piece on why we need trees, cvc, ccvc word work and short and long vowel review.
Math: The students continued work on counting beyond 100, by 5's and 2's. We continue to work on 3D shapes (solid and fat--they have depth) cone, cube, sphere, pyramid and rectangular prism. The students also continued to work on pertinent vocabulary associated with geometric solids-- edges, solid, faces, corners/vertices. Lots of exploration and creativity using a variety of materials. The students are now working in a new math journal. They are looking at the pictures to create addition sentences. The journal has a combination of word problems that can be solved using either addition or subtraction processes. Our April Calendar Book is a delight to all. There is an additional page of number hunt numbers (25-100) and a 2 digit what comes before.
Writing: The students continue to work on beginning with a capital letter, using spaces between words and using punctuation marks. Where do we place lowercase?? They had lots of writing opportunities this week. They are reading their writing to someone at their table. That friend may offer a suggestion to the writing. Peers helping each other! We began a discussion about what a paragraph is--multiple sentences about one topic that flows together and has an introduction, middle and ending. The students will begin work on their draft next week.
Science: The students continued their study of shadows. They reviewed what makes a shadow and created a shadow pose that they will use in beginning paragraph writing. They observed their classmates shadow pose. Some students observed that a bigger shadow will hide a smaller one.
Back in the classroom, we did an experiment where I created shadows using different objects. The students observed and then chatted with their table mates. Lots of chatter about "light" shadows and "very dark" shadows. The students learned that different types of shadows are made depending on how much light is passing thru the object. Light can pass thru some objects and not others. The students made predictions about what kind of shadow a certain object might produce. We worked on some vocabulary--opaque shadow--no light passing thru (book), translucent shadow--some light passing thru (wax paper), transparent shadow--no shadow at all--all the light passes thru (mirror). The students had a chance to use their own items and test them out on the overhead. They recorded their reflections in their science journals.
Technology: In reading, whole group centered apps included Oz Phonics and Read on Sight for skill building in sentence word order, vocabulary building, consonant blends and word scramble. In small group work, the apps Montessori Crossword and CVC Sorts 2 were used to reinforce short u and ck words. In math, whole group centered apps included Shapes, TapTap Blocks and Geoboard for work on 2D and 3D shapes. Individual work began on Keyboarding Without Tears, BrainPop Jr. had some great videos on space, solar system and the sun.
Literature: "What Makes Day and Night?" "How Night Came to Be," "The Big Book of Space," "Big Bang," "Shadows," "Nothing Sticks Like a Shadow," "I Love My Shadow," "I have a Friend."
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