Thankful and Kind

This week before Thanksgiving we are putting a bit of extra focus on being thankful and kind. Our guidance lesson with Mrs. McCleary today focused on things we can do to show kindness and you will hopefully see an activity that you child did coming home today. In class we made a new bulletin board with turkeys who have speech bubbles telling things each child is thankful for. Here are a few photos of this project.

Buddy Reading with Flashlights

At the end of last week our class filled our Champ Band bucket again and as a celebration they chose to do buddy reading with flashlights on Friday. So much fun!

A Great Word Study Game!

Monday-Thursday we do some very specific word study work in our classroom that supports students' reading, writing, and spelling skills. On Fridays we play a game to help us practice our learned words! The favorite game so far is one that we call "beat the teacher." The kids all sit on the rug with small dry erase boards and a teacher stands at the large board in front. Another adult reads a word and everyone has to write it correctly 5 times (one in each corner as well as the middle of their board). The kids try to be faster than the teacher and while the teacher might have the spelling advantage (though all words are ones we have practiced many times) the kids have the advantage of a smaller writing surface. We have had so much fun practicing our words this way on Fridays that last week we invited Mr. Antonicci in to challenge the kids! The game was close all the way through but the kids won on a final tie breaker word at the end! 

Water cycle

We have been learning about the weather and the water cycle during science. The class made bead bracelets that went along with a water cycle song we've been singing. The bracelets were to help them explain the parts of the water cycle to someone at home. If they have not shown you already ask them to sing the song and explain the water cycle using their bracelet!

Diwali

Last week our class learned about Halloween, Day of the Dead, and also talked a bit about Diwali (which all took place close to the same time). One of our classmates celebrates Diwali at home and today his dad came in to teach us about the holiday! He made some great connections for students about other holidays they know by talking about decorating (in part using colored lights and garland), exchanging gifts/cards, and visiting family and friends to celebrate together. We decorated our classroom door and also made Rangoli artwork. Thank you, Tika, for coming it to teach us!

Halloween

Last week we learned about the holidays Halloween and Day of the Dead, which is a great introduction to customs in the country of Mexico, which we will study later this year. Below are some photos of holiday read alouds, kids making "creepy carrots" based on the book of the same title, and everyone at our harvest party. Thank you so much to everyone who joined us and helped out!

Reading Strategies

During the months of September and October we have been using our Readers' Workshop lesson time to learn about reading strategies. These give students tools to solve tricky words when they come to them in their books. Our reading strategies include check the picture, think about the sounds in the word, think of what would make sense, look for word families/chunks you know, read past the puzzling word then come back and re-read the sentence, try a different pronunciation for letters (especially vowels), and break the word into smaller parts. An important part of our discussion of strategies is that we almost always use several together. We often need to check the picture, look at the sounds, think of what makes sense, etc together.

Entering November we have switched our whole group lesson focus to discussions about character, main idea, and retelling stories. Small groups (which meet after the main lesson while the class is reading independently) are still working daily on reading strategies and reading skills targeted at their individual needs.

Here are some photos of a whole group lesson when I am modeling how to use the strategy, "read past the puzzling word then go back and read the sentence again." There is also a photo of one of our classmates coming up to the document camera to show the class how he had used the same strategy in his own reading!