"Peek at the Week" December 8-12

Did you know possums use their tails to climb?

Did you know that sea turtle are born with teeth?

Did you know hurricanes are the biggest storms in the world?

These are just some of the cool facts we learned in our nonfiction texts this week!

Take a peek into our week :)

Math Workshop 

For the next two weeks we will be exploring addition and subtraction strategies through a unit called The Double Decker Bus!  We are learning how to use 5 and 10 groups to help us add and subtract with better accuracy and fluency!

We use a math rack to help model our strategies. The math rack has two 'decks' with 10 beads. The beads are grouped in in 2 sets of 5s on each deck. 

This week, we explored how we could easily see the number of passengers on the bus.  We learned that if we look for 5 and 10 groups it helps us see the passengers easier!  

We can easily see that this bus has 18 passengers by seeing 10 on the bottom plus 8 on the top. Some children saw 18 because they noticed that there were 2 empty seats, so 20-2=18!

Next, we explored different ways to show the same total of passengers on the  bus. We decided that there were 'easy' and 'hard' ways to see passengers quickly. 

Both these math racks show 7 passengers, but it is easier to see 7 quickly on the right rack. We can easily see the 5-group and 2 more!

We also learned a game called Passenfer Pairs.  In this game, children look for 2 cards with the same total number of passengers. 

Reader's Workshop 

We continued our study on nonfiction. This week, we learned that readers need to put in the breaks when they read. 

Reader's need to stop and think about each section or book before moving on.

We also learned that readers can choose a path when reading a nonfiction book! We learned that readers can 'dabble through' first by noticing text feature then going back and reading the main text. We also learned readers may choose to read the main text first, then go back and read the text features!

We wrapped up the week by recording facts in our reader response notebooks!

Word Work

This week we added 5 new word wall words!

Her

Him

Into

Us

Make

We practiced these words on spelling city  and we typed them in the computer lab!

We also continued our focus on long and short Ii. We practiced by making words: 

Playing 4-in-a-row

Science

We wrapped up our unit on weather by learning a song about the water cycle. Check it out!

http://youtu.be/UpfSfojw4I0

Have a wonderful weekend :)

Love,

Mrs. Hogue

"Peek at the Week" December 1- 5

Take a look at our week!

Math Workshop 

We wrapped up Unit 3 this week. The assessments came home in your child's folder on Friday. Please be sure to return these on Monday! 

Reader's Workshop

We started a mini unit on nonfiction this week! We learned that readers read nonfiction books to learn new things and become experts on different topics. 

We started the week exploring the different nonfiction topics we have in our classroom. 

We also noticed nonfiction books have text features! We are keeping a list of all he different features we discover. 

We also learned that readers have to get their minds ready to read nonfiction. Readers think about what they already know about a topic and what they might be wondering. 

Word Work

We learned about the long and short sounds of Ii this week. 

We sorted the long and short sounds of Ii. We also highlighted long I sounds that had the silent E at the end!

 We also learned 5 new word wall words: 

Their

Then

Them

Out

don't

Science 

We explored the water cycle more this week by creating a water cycle mobile!  We learned that water starts as accululation, goes up as evaporation, forms clouds as condensation, and comes down as precipitation!  We are working hard at using these big words 

We had a great week!!