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| We had a snowball fight! |
In the words (sort of) of Montel Jordan, "This is how we do it. It's Thursday night and I feel all right." I truly feel this captures the week gone by. I hope the kids had as much fun as I did. Here is the week in review.
This week in science, the students continued their look at the Moon. They learned how the moon is lit up by the sun and why the phases happen. The students explored all of the different shapes of the Moon that can appear on different nights. They used their, My Moon Book, to observe photos of the Moon taken over the course of four weeks and drew pictures of the Moon's phases in their book. They used these observations to discover patterns in how the Moon’s shape changes and predicted when the next full moon will appear.
In writing, the students started their narrative or "small moment" unit. We continue to focus on Capital letters and ending punctuation too. The small moments concept asks the writer to think of a specific moment in time to write about. I use the analogy of a watermelon. I explained that big topics are like watermelons – large and overwhelming. However, by focusing on a specific seed, they can explore a small moment in detail. If you would like to learn about this analogy, please click here.
The Daily 4 Time is our literacy block rotations. This allows me to differentiate each reading group effectively. This week the groups all focused on some form of comprehension, sight words (if they have tested out), and specific phonetic concepts. One group focused on the short /I/ & /o/ sounds, anther group focused on the /ay/ & /ai/ sounds, a third group focused on the /ch/ digraph, and the fourth group focused on the /aw/ sound. During this block (the other rotations) the kids also had time to read self selected books, work on spelling irregular sight words, and also used the Lexia phonetic program.
First grade math had the students focusing on dominoes and the fact families that they can make with them. There has also been a month long focus on becoming fluent with the complements of ten. Students who are still reversing numbers, also continued to get extra support with that work (thank you parent volunteers for that!). The students have also been working on creating addition story problems that have a part unknown or a total unknown. This allows them to start thinking about information that is given on stories and thinking about what the problem is really asking them to solve.
We also got outside on Tuesday morning and took a walk as a class. The kid worked on using their five finger breathing technique (for self regulation). The kids enjoy time to walk and talk with their friends and also get some extra movement in. Monday's and Tuesday's have the kids going almost 4 straight hours of academics. This allows for a nice little break.
This week's Global Read Aloud book was Lift by Minh Le. This is a story of a young girl named Iris whose favorite thing to do is push elevator buttons. After a serious family betrayal (her little brother dares to push the button himself), Iris discovers a magic elevator button that transports her to different fantastical places. After the story the kids made their own elevator button panel with Mr. Mongeon. They also worked with me on completing a picture and writing prompt of where they would go in their own elevator adventure. I hope we can finish these tomorrow or early next week. Your child should have brought home their elevator buttons panel and use it as a way to retell the story to you. If you would like to hear this story and/or listen to it with your child, please click below.
NOTES:
*We will be carving pumpkins on Tuesday afternoon (from 1:00-2:15). We will be doing this with our buddy classroom (Mrs. Smith's 5/6 grade class). This will get a little bit messy, please have your child wear clothes that are good for this event. If they have long hair, it may be good to pull it back.
*Halloween! Unfortunately Halloween falls during the school week again this year. I know we will see some tired kids on Friday morning and I totally understand that. For some of them, this is their super bowl! As a school, we ask that no costumes or props from costumes come to school. This helps us keep the focus on academics during the day. We will certainly read books about the traditions and celebration of Halloween and do a write up about it on Thursday. I appreciate all of your support with this.
*Overall the kids have done great with the homework bags. As a reminder, the bag and the book should come back each day, regardless of whether or not it was read that night. Remember that bags don;t come home on Fridays. I will also not send it Thursday of this coming week. You all will be busy enough that evening.
*It's not too late to sign up for the Ski and Skate Sale. Please use this link to do so.
That is all for now. I just want to reiterate that this group is awesome and I love the energy they bring. I hope you all have a great weekend.
Peace,
Mr. Young
Some art class photos and a two more from the snowball fight we had on Thursday during our class meeting..
