Hands on Nature and Reading Celebration

This week we had Hands on Nature.  We learned about the different types of rocks.  We has and a puppet show and we learned that igneous rocks are formed from magma and lava and an example is granite.  We learned that sedimentary rocks are formed sediments like sand and shells and an example is sandstone.  We learned the metamorphic rocks are made from heat and pressure and an example is gneiss.  After the puppet show we had 2 stations.  In one station they looked at rocks closely to see how they looked and felt.  They used this information to identify sandstone, slate, gneiss, marble, pumice and obsidian.  In the second station they made their own fossils.  They did this by making a ball with some dough and choosing a shell or rock and pushing it into the dough.  Lastly they went on a scavenger hunt in the classroom to find items that were made from rock.  Some examples they found were computers, pencils, glasses, and windows.

On Thursday we celebrated the end of our Non-fiction unit in Reader's Workshop.  Over the last few days, students became experts on a topic by growing their knowledge from multiple texts.  They used the information that they learned about and shared it with the rest of their classmates in a tour around the classroom.  Ask your child what they learned from the other experts in the class.

Have a wonderful weekend,
Nancy

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Week of November 2nd

I apologize for not posting to this blog the past couple of weeks.  I will try to get back to regular weekly posts.  

This week we are wrapping up our non-fiction writing unit.  We celebrated our hard work and shared our stories on Thursday with our classmates.  Next week we will begin a unit on Opinion pieces.  Check out the pictures from our share.  In December we will invite parents in for our Opinion piece celebration.  Stay tuned for details.

In math we began a new unit this week.  Our New Unit is "Addition & Subtraction Within One Hundered".  This unit focuses on strategies for multi-digit addition and subtraction within the range of 0 to 100.  The first module emphasizes the number line model and encourages students to develop the strategy of using "skip-jumps" based on multiples of 5 and 10.  The second module continues to use the number line as a computational tool through which students add and subtract 2 digit numbers.  the third module focuses on addition and subtraction, but uses the base ten structure (collecting ones and tens).  The fourth module requires students to determine the frequency with which various colored objects appear in a bag and to graph the data.

In readers workshop we continue to work with non-fiction books but our focus is on comparing texts on the same topic.  We have talked about how experts grow knowledge across books by noticing parts that go together and adding to what we already know.

This week we wrapped up our Physical geography unit working on a map journal and talking about the compass rose and the directions; north, south, east and west.  Next week we will begin our first science unit.  We will be looking at various animals and noticing their unique characteristics and how humans have adapted those characteristics to help solve problems that we have.

Have a wonderful weekend,
Nancy

October Hands on Nature

It was great seeing everyone at conferences this week!!

This week we had Hands on Nature.  We learned about erosion and the agents that contribute to it; water, wind, gravity and glaciers.  We had a puppet show that taught us this information.  We did several experiments to see how  like shaking a container to mimic a rolling river see what happens to rocks compared to a still stream. We tested what kinds of water will have the biggest impact breaking soil down.  We did this using a dropper, baby bottle and sprayer and testing it to see what breaks down a pile of flour the most.  We did the same kind of experiment with wind.  Ask your child about what they learned.  I'd like to thank Janet and Amy for coming in to teach the class!!!

Have a wonderful weekend,
Nancy

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