Winter Sports 2018
January 31, and February 7
February 1st Early Release Day
Teacher In-Service Day
February 2nd No School
Teacher In-Service Day
Ms. Paquette's 5-6 Penny War
We are collecting coin donations to give to the Committee on Temporary Shelter. Ms. Paquette's class will be visiting and serving a meal at C.O.T.S. They would like to raise money to help buy clothes, food, and toys for homeless families. The class that collects the most money wins a special ice cream treat!
Classroom News
This was another busy and productive week in our classroom! Students were so excited to participate in their first winter sports activity! I chaperoned a small group that was learning to ski at Smuggs. It was awesome to see all of our students enjoying the winter weather and to see the amazing persistence they all displayed. Teachers and chaperones alike shared story after story that illustrated how thoughtful and caring our students are. On Friday, we spent lots of time outdoors in the sunshine. We visited the tepee, collected more Sun data and saw our Big Buddies from Ms. Vargo's 4-5 class. A big thank you goes to Wade Chivington for helping us make our first fire inside the tepee! He spent the whole morning thawing the frozen tepee, hauling firewood and making us a cozy fire! I'm sure it was a memory our students will hold onto!
Spelling and Fundations
The first and second graders finished up their units of study on base words/suffixes, and long and short vowel sound words. Even though we had a short week, students took their post assessments of Friday and showed lots of improvement. We WONT have a spelling packet the week of January 29th because of the short week. We will work on our new spelling units here at school.
I will introduce a online spelling website called spellingcity.com.
We will learn to navigate to the website, find our spelling practice words and explore the many games available.
Readers' Workshop
In reading, students read their own versions of The Three Little Pigs. We practiced reading our books with our partner. We tried to read with lots of expression. We changed our facial expressions to match how each character was feeling, and looked closely at each character's perspective.
Patterns in the Sky
On Friday, we collected more Sun data. This time, we used our past evidence of the Sun's pattern in the sky. We predicted where the Sun would be at certain times of the day. Students drew detailed pictures of the horizon and continued to measure the Sun's distance from the horizon with their fists. In our scientists circle, we made connections to time. Students noticed that the sun appears to move in a circle... like a clock, and that it is always in the same place at the same time. We reviewed our essential question - how can we use patterns in the sky to make predictions? Students worked in small groups to draw models to explain our initial phenomenon. Models included the Sun, Earth, light, dark, arrows showing rotation, and much more. Students are learning to work small groups. We learned how to share our ideas, ask questions of each other, argue respectfully, and take feedback from our peers. We will keep working on this throughout the year, and as they progress through each grade level.
Writers' Workshop
In writing, we continued to examine different types of reviews. We identified leads, reasons and how the author told more by elaborating on each reason. We also noticed lots of different ways to end a review. We spent time identifying specialized language in each review. Students picked out book, restaurant and video game review words. We will begin writing our own reviews in February!
Math
This week we have loved working at our various math stations! I have been working with students individually to administer our winter benchmark assessments. We will begin a unit of study on the number line, an important mathematical model. Students will work with a life sized number that we will build together in class. We will use reasoning and number sense to identify unknown or empty boxes on our number line. Later, we will begin to use our number line to add and subtract.
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