Newsletter 12/21/18

In Reading Workshop this week, we noticed that trickier books have pattern breaks!  We have to be extra careful while reading and look out for them.  We enjoyed showing our 5th Grade Buddies our amazing reading skills, too.

In Writing Workshop, we made a narrative writing checklist that will help us create our best work.  We used it while reading this week and it guided us to make smart decisions as authors.

In our math lessons, we played a lot of games that reinforced the concepts of more than, less than and fewer than.

We gathered Decembers's weather data, and despite how it feels today, it IS getting colder!

We made wonderful crafts this week and enjoyed extra play time and the all school sing-a-long.

Happy holidays and enjoy the vacation!

News and Notes:

• Book Sleeves due on Wednesday 1/2 when we return to school
• Teddy Bear Day is coming!  Look for a note home on 1/4

More than, less than and fewer than math games

Holiday crafts with our Buddies

Elfing fun

Our all school sing-a-long

Newsletter 12/14/18

In Reading Workshop this week, we strengthened our reading muscles by attempting to increase our stamina.  Every student received a reading mat with two sides: one to pile up the books to read and the other side for finished books to read again.  When we have a reading plan, we don't waste time searching for books to read, but pick up the next one in our pile.

In Writing Workshop we learned how to support our stories with illustrations that match.  We also learned how to end a story.  We don't want to leave our readers wondering!

We worked on retelling the story of how Baby Echo learned to fly in our phonics lessons.  We are sequencing events and trying to include character emotions while retelling.  We also learned new sight words, "what" and "went".  We had fun reading "Jingle Bells" and searching for the "ing" cluster within words.

We did another problem solving Exemplar this week.  One day, we solved it with various manipulative models (see below) and then next day we showed our problem solving on paper.

In Second Steps, we learned that we can tell how someone is feeling by looking at his/her face.  We studied pictures of people and tried to guess their feelings.  Then we reacted to imaginary situations and tried to guess how one another were feeling.  We are working toward reading one another's body language, so that we may be better friends.

The Hour of Code was this week and we coded with our 5th Grade Buddies in the Library!

Polar Express Day was such a blast!  We read the story, made our own version of the book, made jingle bells and wrote about what we would wish for.

News and Notes:

• Book sleeves are due Monday.
• Please let me know if your child is leaving for vacation early. 

Hour of Code fun with our 5th Grade Buddies!

Learning -ing

Our Reading Mats

This week's math Exemplar (a diagram representation)

Our Exemplar problem represented with various manipulative models...

Cozy for the Polar Express book!

Trains . . .

. . . and jingle bell making!

Happy Polar Express Day!

Newsletter 12/7/18

We launched new reading and writing this week!

In Reading Workshop, we recognized that it's sometimes still hard to read one another's writing.  So, our new unit, Writing for Readers, will help us clean things up.  We looked at pieces that were hard to read and easy to read and we noticed how they were different.  See the photo below.  Now that we are writing full sentences, we'll be writing true stories.

In Reading Workshop we recognized that books are going to get harder and harder and we need to be prepared for the challenge!  We're going to super-size our super powers in this next unit, Bigger Books, Bigger Reading Muscles.  We looked at books of different levels and noticed how they got harder. 

In math, we've been strengthening our 1:1 correspondence.  We also worked on counting forward and adding one more.  We used our fingers and the number line to help us.

We are all becoming engineers at science time!  We read a book about a child engineer and discussed what engineers do.  Now we're helping Dr. Forshaw solve his "Playground Problem".  Ask your child about his/her plan to keep the playground cool!  We visualized a structure, drew out our plans, and we'll build it on Monday!

News and Notes:

• Book sleeves due Monday
• Scholastic orders due Tuesday (by the end of the school day)
• NEXT FRIDAY is POLAR EXPRESS DAY!!!   Look for a small, blue note coming home today for more information.

Engineers exploring their building materials before making their plans

Various plans to build a shelter

Using fingers to represent numbers and add one more