Jan. 19-22

This week in reading workshop we are reading the story Animal Groups. The kids seem to really LOVE this story. We have a lot of animal lovers in this group. 🙂 This story is an informational text so students will be seeing real pictures of real animals. We are working on comparing and contrasting the animal groups. Students have learned that reptiles, amphibians, fish and birds all lay eggs while mammals are the only group that give birth to a live baby! This story was the perfect introduction for our next writing lesson. The class is really focusing on organizing their thoughts and putting them into a story that makes sense. Along with organizing their ideas they are also starting to learn how to include their voice. Voice is a blend of personality, individuality, confidence, passion and a desire to reach out to readers to make them feel what the writer feels. When the voice is strong, writing reaches out to us as if we were having a conversation with the writer. We hear and feel the writer’s passion for the topic. The students are learning how to do this in their writing. How to incorporate their personalities into their work. Since they all love animals so much I have a feeling they will do well with this while writing about their animals!

In math we are still working in unit 5. The class is learning about greater than, less than and equal to symbols. The phrase I like to use is “The alligator mouth wants to eat the biggest number” (4 > 3). This seems to help them with the direction of the symbol. Students are also learning how to use base ten blocks to make, add, subtract and compare numbers through the hundreds. Place value is very important and I am providing a lot of practice so they can be ready to add and subtract larger numbers.