Week of 1-8-21

 Weekly News 1-8-21

Important Notes:

*On Friday, January 15th we will have a virtual Chewonki presentation on “Animal Adaptations.”  Thanks to our wonderful PTA for sponsoring this enriching event for our students.

*Remember to pack two clean masks.  Students find the masks are quite wet after a long recess time playing outdoors and most want a clean mask for the afternoon!

Our Work this Week:

*In spelling we have focused on words with the -al and -alk pattern.  This was a trickier pattern for many.  We are doing daily sentence dictation practice which incorporates spelling patterns from the week and reinforces using proper mechanics (capitalization and end punctuation).

*During math we worked through addition strategies  in unit 2; combinations of 10, doubles, near doubles, and also odd and even work and solving and writing number stories. We have added a daily fact fluency practice to our routine to help students begin to master all the addition facts.

*In reading workshop we completed our character work by looking at how what we know about a character helps us predict what the character would do.  The kids did great with this.  We are now working on learning about different types of nonfiction books.  We read a narrative nonfiction book, a biography and a how-to book and explored their differences. 

*Writing workshop this week had us busily writing away in our realistic fiction series.  Most students have 2 or 3 books in their series completed.  Next week we will do some “fancying up” work to add illustrations and do careful editing before we share them in a writer’s celebration.  Next up is nonfiction writing!

*Science sessions had us begin a unit on seeds and plants.  Our first mystery was “How does a seed travel all the way around the world?”  After making our way through this investigation we built our own seed models and experimented with how to get them to travel best.  We learned seeds travel by wind, water and animals!

Book response to Seeds Move - facts we learned

Experimenting with a seed "robocoptor!"

Getting active with Mr. Hutchings!

Seeing if we can get our seeds to land outside the zone of darkness!

Playing "Slides and Ladders" to practice odd and even number recognition

We worked on how what we know about the character helps us predict their actions.

Working With Mrs. Joray on musical notes

Using his planner sheet to write his story!

This busy writer is taking some time do do illustrations for his series.

We explored differnt types of nonfiction.

Turn around facts with dominoes

We loved hearing about all the interesting ways seeds get around.

Practicing odd/even with a game.