Week of April 15th

The end of my two solo weeks is already here!  The class has done so much in these last two weeks, but they have truly seemed to fly by.

This week, we had lots of excitement surrounding the concert orchestrated by Diana Burritt!  In addition to the normal unified arts time for music, the students also attended a dress rehearsal with the rest of the SCS first and second graders on Tuesday afternoon.  Other grades (K, 3-5) were their test audience.  All of the class seemed to really enjoy the concert and were proud of the hard work that they had put in during music time.

In math, we had a fun activity for the students that required them to make estimates about frequency and record, graph, and analyze data called Candy Colors.  With their math partners, the students had to predict and then actually figure out how many of each color of Skittles were found in a bag.  The following day, the students created bar graphs to show their results.  To complete the project on the third day, the class created a SUPER graph that combined all of our results.

In writing, we are continuing Popping Poetry with a focus on haikus this week.  The students are working on completing four seasonal poems with the 5-7-5 syllable structure.  This has been a great way for the students to review syllables and think about poetry as a puzzle where they have the power to create the pieces. 

Our cultural geography social studies unit came to a close as the students continued working on and then, shared their final projects.  With a Firefly first grader, each student in our class created a skit, poster, or report comparing and contrasting a celebration or tradition from their collective cultures and a celebration of tradition from one of the other cultures we have learned about in this unit.  As per usual with activities of this nature, it was a wonderful opportunity to see the creativity that our students possess. 

With all of these exciting activities and culminating units, this week has been the perfect way to end my weeks of solo teaching.  The week after vacation will be my last week in the classroom.  Although it may be a little premature, thank you all for welcoming me into the SCS community and into your children's classroom! 

Enjoy the spring break!

Taylor