Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful mothers!! Thank you for everything you do each day for your little one :)
We have been very busy the past two weeks! Here is a look at what we have been up to!
Reader's & Writer's Workshop
We have spent the past two weeks learning how readers research and collect information. The first week we focused on these teaching points:
We spent the week collecting facts. On Friday, we looked over all the information we collected and sorted them into categories. Then, we created a poster to display all our learning.
Finally, we shared our posters with each other!
During the second week we chose a new topic for research. We focused on the following concepts:
-Reader's notice text features and use them to learn more about their topic.
-Readers decide what information is important, and what is not.
-Readers look for information they need for their research.
-Readers check their facts for accuracy.
This week we made "All About Books" as we researched. Check them out!
Next week we will begin a new unit on poetry!
Math Workshop
I love teaching math...and I especially love teaching double digit addition strategies. It is *amazing* to see light bulbs going off as the kids began understanding how to solve these types of problems! I am continually amazed at how much these young learners can do!
We explored base 10 concepts and applying those concepts to solving double (and some triple!) digit addition problems.
We began by building numbers using base 10 blocks.
Then we worked on an activity that I call "build it, solve it, expand it" using 2 and 3 digit numbers.
After we became experts at building and expanding numbers, we began to explore the concept of double digit addition.
In Everyday Math, students are taught an addition strategy called Partial Sums. This is different than the traditional borrowing and carrying that many of us were taught in school. In partial sums, students start by adding the tens, and then the ones. This helps children gain a better understanding of how regrouping works and enables them to solve problems more accurately. For example, in the problem 67 + 25 students will solve it the following way:
60+ 20 = 70
7 + 5 = 12
Now they have a problem of 70 + 12. Many students are able to mentally solve this, however, some will chose to take it one step further:
70 + 10 = 80
0 + 2 = 2
80 + 2 = 82.
Although this method does take children through more steps, it allows for them to solve accurately and with a better understanding.
Science
Did you hear we have worms in our room!? Well we do! We kicked off our new unit on Soil by going outside to explore soil. We were lucky to do this with friend in Ms. Gumm's class. We dug up some soil and recorded what we found!
We wrapped up this activity by recording questions that we had about soil:
Next, we made compost in ziplock baggies. We collected 'leftovers' from lunch such as orange peels, apple cores, and bits of sandwiches. We also collected leaves and twigs to add to the pile. Students worked in pairs to create their own bag filled with compost, and of course WORMS! We will be observing these bags for the next several weeks. We will be noticing how worms play a big role in our soil. (and Ms. Havig is trying to remain calm that she has a cupboard full of wiggly icky worms!)
Our next lesson focused on the properties of sand, humus, and clay- things that make up soil!
We used our senses to observe these three materials!
We were then really lucky to have Mrs. Reisel come to our room to help us make a yummy treat- dirt cake!!! What a fun way to add to our soil unit :) We did make the kids 'work' a bit for the ingredients!
It is hard to see, but his baggie of crushed Oreos looked exactly like soil!!
It is crazy that we only have 22 days left of school....I am definitely going to soak up as much of these kiddos as I can! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!
Love,
Ms. Havig
Ms. Havig
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