Mrs. Henry's Classroom: Newsletter 3/10/17

Writing Workshop and Reading Workshop are working together right now to teach us all about nonfiction texts. We are reading them and noting the text features during reading times (see photo), and then trying to write our nonfiction pieces the same way! This week we did a lot of work in Writing Workshop: we learned that All About writers think of a BIG topic that can be broken into parts (chapters). We also named each part with a heading that will help our readers know what we plan to teach in that section. Our classroom authors are writing fascinating texts; I'm learning from them! Ask your child to share his/her topic with you.

We also had a lot of fun with kites this week. We read a kite poem, learned how to write lowercase ks, learned how the silent "e" makes "i" say a "long vowel sound"... we even made kites to fly around the room (see photo)!

In science, we learned what the saying "March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb" means. We are certainly seeing "LION" weather! Perfect for flying kites! The students had a fun time going outside at recess each day and reporting whether it was "lion weather" or "lamb weather".

We continued our study of 3-D shapes this week, looking at each shape and describing it's properties. We learned that 3-D shapes have 2-D faces, for example, a cube has many square faces and a pyramid has triangle faces. We played a fun game called "Matching Faces" where students had to focus very carefully (see photos). We also reviewed the multiple ways to make 10, playing a game called "Perfect Partner Makes Ten". Everyone got a card with a number and had to find their addend partner that would make a sum of ten together. When they found their "perfect partner" they recorded the equation they made together. The students loved this!

News and Notes: