Week of January 20

For a four day week, it felt like five for sure.  The kiddos have done a wonderful job handling indoor recess.  They actually like it!  I have found a site, thanks to Ms. Yonemura, called Go Noodle.  This is a place where we can follow along with dancers to have a movement break.  It's pretty fun. One day we did The Beanstalk and I Like to Move It for dances.

In math this week, we have begun our study of multiplication. We are looking at it, to start, as repeated addition and equal groups. It seems as though we are able to have our math stations for 5 days now due to more adult support.  That is great news. I feel strongly about the small group instruction. I think it's a way that students get what they need for instruction.  On Friday, we tried a new site in the computer lab: Kakooma.  I have the link on a post if your child would like to find it again. We will be doing those puzzles during math stations this coming week.

During reading, we have sharpened our skills picking out character traits and supporting these traits with details from the text. For write about reading this week, students picked a main character in a book which they have read and decided on his/her personality trait. Then, students were asked to go back into the text and support this trait with things the character did or said. We worked portfolio reflections during work jobs as well. On Friday, students read Scholastic News and focused on the main idea of the articles.

As you have hopefully seen, I have added challenge words to the spelling list coming home weekly. These words follow the phonics rule being taught but are a bit more challenging to spell.  They are also there to increase your child's vocabulary. We have been breaking out into groups during word work to do various activities.  Again, each child is working on something at his/her appropriate level. Some are working on basic phonics rules, others are doing some vocabulary development, while others are reviewing previous phonics rules.

In writing, we are continuing our research on our Arctic or Antarctic animal. In the beginning of the week, I asked students to collect information from more than one source. In order to become "experts" on their animals, they need to know a lot of information. We have looked at encyclopedias, books, and websites to gain information. On Thursday, in the computer lab, they went to a website and added info to their notes.  While we become experts on our own animals, we are doing a class study on Polar Bears. This is to model the process of researching and turning it into a quality piece of writing.