5 Days of School = Awesome learning!

As we wrap up another week, I am amazed at all of the material we have covered in the past 5 days! Thank you for your continued support at home. Make sure to check your child’s gold folder for their progress reports.

Writing Portfolios
Instead of beginning our fifth reading lesson this week, we used the past three days to begin developing our writing portfolios. The portfolios will be home to the students writing work and will showcase their growth throughout this school year. The students and I will be creating short and long term writing goals next week. This week we brainstormed why goals are important and the types of goals good writers set. At first the students created a list of writing goals like, “I need better handwriting,” and “practice spelling.” While those are great goals, I encouraged them to think deeper about what would actually make their pieces stronger. We looked at two stories as mentor texts, for the student to see what professional writers do to make their writing awesome. We read the nonfiction book Tree Lady and the fiction story Saturdays and Teacakes (by Charlotte author Lester Laminack!)  After reading those books, the students came up with writing goals like, “I should add more details to my work,” and “I need a beginning, middle, and end in all of my stories.” The students then had the opportunity to review a piece of their writing from earlier this year and think about their personal goals. Next week, during literacy centers, the students will be meeting with me on- on-one to finalize their short term and long term writing goals. If you have a skill you’d like to see your child develop as a writer, share it with them this weekend.

Here we are looking at our first writing piece from the year and thinking about our writing goals.

Reading
This week we completed our fourth reading lesson on cause and effect relationships in stories. Next week we will begin our new reading lesson on Monday. Like I stated in my last post, this unit will cover reading the story Teacher’s Pets. The students will practice the reading strategy of identifying story structure by hunting for the beginning, middle, and ends of the stories they read. This skill can be practiced in picture and chapter books. We will also work on visualizing, or making movies in our heads, as we read. Next week’s vocabulary words are: share, noticed, suddenly, bursting, noises, wonderful, quiet, and sprinkled. 

Spelling
The students have begun working on words with the long and short u sounds, like in the words absolute and shut.

Writing
The students have completed our first Write Traits unit on creating strong ideas and adding in details. They have brainstormed a true life topic and next week they will be writing stories using their new skills from their writing unit. These stories will most likely become one of the pieces in their writing portfolios.

Math
This week the students continued working on telling time and counting money. The students studied how to make change and pretended to be customers and clerks in a store. We also looked at “frames and arrows” problems where the numbers are now controlled by two rules (for example + 5 and – 7.)  We experimented with making shapes using rubber bands on our Geoboards. Thank you for your support at home in making sure the math journals return to school each day. The journals are an important component of our lessons and help Mrs. D and I get a clearer picture of  the students’ understanding of the material.

Here we are making shapes on our Geoboards!

        

Here we are shopping at our “Class store!”

Student Council
As student council elections, draw closer we have been talking about ways to make our school a better place and how to have good sportsmanship. The students have been doing a good job supporting each other, and we are looking forward to voting. Here is the chart the students made that is full of ideas about being a good sport. The students’ ideas included: “Congratulate your friend” and “Have a positive attitude.” The students’ campaign posters look amazing in the cafeteria!

We had a little break dancing at recess yesterday! It really took me back to my own elementary school days. 🙂 Have a great weekend everyone!