Weekly News 11-13-20

 Weekly News 11-13-20

Important Dates & Events:  

11/23 & 11/24 - ½ Days for Parent/Teacher Conferences

11/25 - 11/27 - Thanksgiving Break

Our Work this Week:

*Lexia-  We want students to regularly meet their weekly goal in Lexia.  This program is providing systematic, sequential reading instruction at their individual level and is designed to work through consistent use.  Always shoot me an email if you need to know if they are meeting their goals or need more usage.

*In spelling we have almost completed our work on short i words and will do the spelling test next week.  At that time we will do our pre-test for unit 4 on short o words.  Our practice with short i words included sorting by pattern, rhyming, identifying double consonants, proofreading for short i errors, and antonyms and synonyms. We also practiced hearing and identifying the difference between short and long a words through picture and word sort activities. Our spiraling grammar and language work gave us time to practice short/long vowels, digraphs, end punctuation, plural/singular nouns, long vowel teams, nouns, proper nouns and verbs. You would be surprised to see how much kids enjoy working on grammar - they are enthusiastic about it!

*During math we used function machines to identify rules and patterns and then apply them.  Students are doing a great job noticing if a pattern increases or decreases.  We also solved an “open response” problem that encouraged critical thinking!  In our math boxes we worked hard on place value, addition/subtraction, adding 10 efficiently, telling time and explaining our math thinking in writing.  Next week we will assess unit 7 skills and then start the grade 2 math program.

*In reading workshop we began to learn more about genre.  Our second category was non-fiction; books that give us true information.  We made a chart of different clues that help us know a book fits into the non-fiction genre. Kids had numerous ideas, such as photographs, facts and real topics.  After I read them a non-fiction book we worked to record specific clues from the book that proved it was non-fiction.  Kids also practiced reading a book on RAZ kids and doing a quiz to show their understanding!  I am currently reassessing each child’s reading and will give you all an update at conferences.

*Writing workshop this week was time to choose a favorite small moment to fancy up with illustrations for a writer’s celebration.  We are revising and editing this piece of writing also.  We will practice rereading our stories to find errors and fix capitalization, punctuation and spelling.  Next week we will share these with our classmates at a writer’s celebration.

*During science we completed our third investigation into animal biodiversity, “How could we get more birds to visit a bird feeder?”  We began this last week and planned out our prototypes. Each child selected a bird and type of feeder and designed their feeder with two sketches.  This week I gave them a variety of materials and they built their prototype.  They had the best time and showed a lot of creativity and critical thinking about their designs.  

*Specials:

ART:  In art this week we did weaving with yarn on cardboard.

Library:  In library we explored Pebble Go with Ms. Luchies and used the site to research and take notes about an animal.  This fit right in with our non-fiction work!

Sorry it's sideways!  In math we solved "What's My Rule?" problems to identify and apply patterns.

We explored Pebble Go with Ms. Luchies in Library.

Bird Feeder Building!

This student has her planning sheet nearby as she builds her prototype.

Our work exploring nonfiction texts

We sorted short/long a words in class!

We 

Ms. Luchies showed us how to navigate Pebble Go!

Hard at work writing small moment stories

Weaving in art

We are playing Salute in math!

The kids loved weaving in art!

Hard at work in science

Bird Feeder

Using a checklist to edit our work!