"Peek at the Week" March 9-13

 We had so much fun going to see the play Ivy and Bean on Monday!  The play combined scenes from many of the books in this series.  We have read the first two books of this series, but there are many more.  These are fun books to read with your child- be sure to check them out!

In other exciting news.... we won the Coin Wars!!!!  Thank you to everyone who donated coins and money.  We will be having our Ice Cream Party on Friday afternoon.
                                                               

We enjoyed all the new books for our classroom library!

 Here is a peek into our week!

Math Workshop
We wrapped up Unit 5 this week. We took our assessment on Thursday.  Please look for these to come home early next week.

On Monday we will begin our next unit on Data Analysis.  This unit if full of new vocabulary and concepts for finding the difference between numbers.  Please keep the family letters in a safe place so you can refer to them when helping your child complete homework!

Reader's Workshop
Our strategies for solving tricky words continues to grow!  This week we focused on strategies for making meaning.  We are learning that reading doesn't just consist of reading the words on the page - we also have to be thinking while we read!

We added these strategies this week:

Readers make a picture in their minds
When we watch movies, the characters move and talk.  We want to create these same images in our minds while we read!  Readers try to imagine things characters do, say, and think while they are reading.

Readers ask, "Do I understand all the parts?"
Earlier this year we learned how to retell stories.  Now that we are stronger readers, we have to be aware when stories may become confusing. We have to stop and ask ourselves, "Do I understand all the parts of the story?" We want to check our understanding often while we read.  We learned that even grown up readers have to do this!

Readers notice the setting of stories.
Our stories are now more complex, and authors use many different settings to tell the story.  We have to be aware of where the story is taking place in order to understand the story better.

We practiced this with the book Ivy and Bean and the Ghost That Had To Go.  

At the beginning of the year we might have simply said 'At the beginning of the story, it takes place at school.  Then the story takes place at home'.  But now that we are March first graders we can be even more specific.  We know that the story starts out at recess on the soccer field.  Next, Ivy and Bean are in Bean's backyard in her old playhouse.  See how it is easier to imagine where the characters are?

Next week we will be focusing on how readers notice interesting words and how they use clues to figure out a word's meaning.

Word Work

We continued our focus on R-blends. 

Making r-blend words

ABC order r-blend word

Our Friday word work centers also focused on r-blends. 

R-blend poem

We highlighted all the r-blend words in the poem!

R-blend sentence scramble 

We cut out words and arranged them in a sentence that mad sense!

R-blend 4 in a Row

Our last center on Friday was an exciting one- keyboarding! Our classroom is piloting a new keyboarding program that we are hoping to implement next school year! Keyboarding Without Tears goes along with our handwriting program, Handwriting Without Tears. This program will teach child beginning keyboarding and mouse control skills  through interactive literacy experiences. 

We were excited to see Mat Man again! Many students remembered him when they learned to draw people in K4!

It felt really funny to use fingers other than our pointer finger to type! We really had to concentrate! 

After spring break, we will spend 5-10 minutes each day on keyboarding skills. :)

Science

This week we explored color. What happens to color when we mix it with water? We started with a black dot and a green dot on a filter. Then, we added water and look what happened!

We learned that the color black is made up of many colors! Green is made up of yellow and blue! Adding the water separated the colors!

We had a great week! 2 more weeks until spring break!

Enjoy the beautiful weekend!

Love,

Mrs. Hogue

"Peek at the Week" March 2-6

Take a peek into our week!

Math Workshop

We started the week off by learning how to add 3 addends to find a total. We learned that another word for addend is number.  We tried different strategies, but found the easiest way to add 3 numbers is to group them into an easier fact!

This friend added 5 + 4 to make a total of 9. Then, she was able to add 7 more to get a grand total of 16!

Of course, it is always easiest to find a ten group! Then we know our total will be a teen number.

Next we began exploring double digit numbers on the hundreds grid. But first, we had to do a quick review of ten groups and ones.  We were split into groups and given a bin of objects to count- and we had to work together!

We quickly learned that it was easiest -and fastest- to group the objects into ten groups. This helps us stay accurate whe. We are counting. 

On Thursday we began using the 100 grid to help us add.  We learned that as we go down a column we are adding one, and as we go across a row we are adding 10 more!

We wrapped up the week practicing adding and subtracting 10 from a given number!

Reader's Workshop 

This week we added 2 more strategies to our tricky work chart:

Look for long vowel patterns

We learned that readers need to pay attention to vowel patterns. This helps them make sure the word sounds right in the story. We were on the lookout for some common long vowel patterns in our own books. We recorded them on stricky notes and displayed them!

Try other sounds for letters

As we found words with the 'ea' pattern, we quickly learned that it can make 3 different sounds: long e, short e, and long a! Talk about tricky! That's why it is important for readers to try other sounds when the first way just doesn't sound right!

Word Work

We began looking at R-blends this week. We will continue this into next week.

We also enjoyed Read Across America Day on Monday!