We are working on writing personal narratives in Writing Workshop, telling stories that only we can tell. Everyone is
planning out their stories and working on making them readable. We're using our partners every day now, to see if they can read our work and to give us ideas on how we can add more to our stories.
We are also working with our partners in Reading Workshop. We learned how to sit back-to-back for private reading time and then hip-to-hip for partner time. Readers enjoy their books on their own and then make a plan for their partner time. This week we learned how partners can echo read together. Ask your child to tell you about it! We also did a fun lesson on increasing our stamina while reading. We are using reading plan mats to organize which books we will read, have been read, and need to be read again (see the photo below). Having a reading plan helps students stay on task and read for longer periods of time. Lastly, we all read "Jingle Bells" many times this week, and we learned that the letters i, n, and g work together to make a new sound! We met the King of Ing (we all pretended) and highlighted all of the "ing" words in "Jingle Bells" (there's a lot!).
We continued measuring in math this week. We enjoyed measuring our feet with connecting cubes, making sure to measure from heel to toe. Then we measured each others' feet and put all of our feet in order from shortest to longest. Who's got the longest feet? Ask your child! We also began measuring with popsicle sticks. We measure with all kinds of non-standard units in K!
In Social Studies, we continue to learn about various December holidays and traditions. Our Second Step lesson was about being assertive. This was a good one! Make sure you read the sheet sent home on Thursday, because an assertive child learns how to help him/herself and that's a wonderful ability!
In Science, we paid close attention to the weather. We watched our outside thermometer slowly go down, down, down this week. It was "in the purple" (the coldest it reads)! We talked about how the weather effects our lives and sometimes makes us change our plans. We had to stay indoors for recess, but we had fun!
Polar Express was a great success! We listened to the classic tale and then we made our own versions, putting the book into the correct sequence. We got to play with the Henry Boys' awesome collection of trains!!! We also made jingle bells and then rang them as we read our "Jingle Bell" poem one last time. Lastly, we snuggled up for a short holiday movie and enjoyed a popcorn treat. What a fun day.
News and Notes:
