Good Afternoon to all of you! It's hard to believe that we just finished our 9th week of school. It was nice to have 5 full days of learning this week and there is a lot to talk about, so let's get to it.
I have to start with science this week because it seemed like it was a big hit with the class. We continued to work on writing as scientists and recording in our science notebooks. This week they all created a table and recorded results (times) of our experiment on them. The students also made predictions and drew conclusions from their results. I have a 3 foot lava lamp, up on a shelf, in my classroom. and I asked the students if they knew how it worked? No one could really explain why it did what it did. We then made two different lava lamps as a class. Each lamp had water, oil, and an Alka-seltzer was dropped in each bottle, each time we tested. The only difference was one bottle had hot water and one had cold water. Ask your child about the experiment and what he/she may have learned. The detail, of their learning, in their science notebooks was amazing.
As you are aware, Wednesday was a day where we wore orange to represent unity against bullying. We have had several discussions about teasing and bullying and what the difference was. Hopefully each child can speak of the differences. I read the story The Smallest Girl In the Smallest grade, by Justin Roberts. "Hardly anyone noticed young Sally McCabe. She was the smallest girl in the smallest grade. Sally notices everything—from the twenty-seven keys on the janitor’s ring to the bullying happening on the playground. One day, Sally has had enough and decides to make herself heard. And when she takes a chance and stands up to the bullies, she finds that one small girl can make a big difference." After we were done reading the book, I had the students identify different scenes that inspired them, during the reading. They then used comic book formatted paper to create illustrations and quotes, titles, and/or words about their scene. I went with the comic book format because so many kids are into graphic novels. This choice was welcomed by many.
Math class found the 1st graders continuing to build upon their knowledge of complements of 10 and, for some, using that knowledge to build 20 or even complements of 100. We also used 6 dot and 9 dot dominoes to work on fact fluency by playing a few different games with them. The second graders (per Ms. Figdor) have started a unit on place value, estimation, and measurement. During this unit they will explore base ten concepts and models within 1,000. This week we modeled numbers over 20 using unifix cubes, base ten blocks, and array dots. Then, students learned several new games to continue to develop efficiency with math facts.
Writing continues to be a huge hit and kids keep asking for more time. Our writing blocks are 70 minutes long and most seem like they would go another 30 if time allowed. I love the enthusiasm and the narrative stories continue to build in elaboration and detail. This week the students were each given a student rubric to self assess their work (for editing) before meeting with me.
NOTES:
*Thank you all who were able to help with the ski and skate sale. A special shout-out to the organizers for all of the time and commitment that it takes to pull this off. We are certainly a lucky community.
*Some of the Scholastic books have come in and I will start distributing them on Monday. They will be in your child's homework bag with a stick it note that indicates it is from their book order.
That is all for now. I hope you all have a great weekend.
Peace,
Tommy
