Week of Sept. 7th

I hope everyone has gotten off to a great start of the year.  It's wonderful to have your children back in my class again this year and to Welcome our two new students.  This blog is where I let families know what is happening during the week in our classroom.  I try and update it weekly on Fridays.  I hope in the future to have an additional way of communicating what your children are doing using a program called SeeSaw where I can post pictures of what your children are doing that only you will be able to access.  I often post pictures to this blog as well of things we are doing.  I will begin to do that after I have double checked permissions of who is allowed to have their picture and who is not. 

This week in writing we are working on editing one story from the ones we have written this year.  We are making the stories better by adding details, punctuation, capital letters when appropropriate and making sure we have an introduction and a wrap up.  We will have a mini celebration among ourselves on Monday to celebrate their great work!

In math we are practicing using mental math strategies so that we can solve math facts more efficiently.  Some of the strategies we are using are doubles, halves, and doubles plus or minus one.  We have also practiced decomposing numbers to make multiple facts that represent a number such as 5+6=11 and 7+4=11 and 8+3=11, etc.

In Reader's Workshop we are reviewing our reading strategies so that we know what to do to figure out unknown words while we are reading independently.  We have also spent a lot of time talking about picking Just Right Books and I am checking in with each student to make sure they are reading those Just Right books to help them become better readers. 

On Tuesday, we had Hands on Nature.  We talked about the sun and how the earth revolves around the sun.  To show this we traced our shadows on the sidewalk with chalk.  We out about 40 min. later and traced our shadows again and discovered that the shadows had moved.  We also went out and experimented with ice in the sun and shade to see which area was cooler.  Our hypothesis was that it was cooler in the shade and the ice would melt slower.  After leaving it outside for 40 min. or so, we went back out and discovered that our hypothesis was correct.  It was cooler in the shade so the ice melted less.  Thank-you to Janet Franz for coming in and leading this on her own.  We are still looking for Volunteers to help her out.  It is not a requirement to attend the training to help out with Hands on Nature.  Hands on Nature is always on a Tuesday afternoon.  It is the Tuesday after the 1st Thursday of the month.  If you can help out, please let me know and I will get you in touch with Janet. 

Next week is Fire Prevention.

Have a wonderful weekend,
Nancy