February 27th

Writing
Our informational writing topic this week was seasons. We read How Do You Know It's Winter? and Recess at 20 Below to get ideas for how author's organized informational texts and added in details and descriptive words to make the text more interesting.

Each child chose a topic to write about, then wrote down a list of subheadings they could use for their topic.

Next week students will each chose a piece of writing to publish!

Ask your child: What season did you write about this week? What informational writing did you decide to publish?

Writing in comfy places around the room

Reading

In reading this week we started comparing texts. We started with 2 informational texts. We read a book about the mayor and wrote everything we learned. Then the next day we read another book and wrote down any new learning. Anything that was repeated we put in the middle of our Venn diagram or starred to know it was important information.

Then we compared an informational and literature text. We read a book about the President, then listened to a literature text (Madame President) and compared that to the informational book. The students loved sharing how they still learned information from the literature book!

Next week we will be reading books from the same series and compare the different books to one another.

Ask your child: Does the book you're reading remind you of any other books you have read? What connections can you make between this book and another text you've read?

Writing facts about the President

Word sorts, leader posters, and reading response journals

Social Studies

The class did a lot of social studies work during reading this week. We spend time discussing community leaders and reading about the Mayor, Governor, and President. Then each child chose a leader to study and research. They used PebbleGo to find their information and create a poster about their leader.

Ask your child: Who did you research this week? What are 2 cool things you learned about that leader?

Math
This was  a very exciting week in math as we started our unit on geometry! We spent time discussing different ways to describe 2-D shapes using the terms side, angle, vertex/vertices, parallel and right angle.

The class played a game where they flip over attribute cards and find shapes that match that attribute (there is only 1 right angle; all sides are the same length; opposite sides are parallel). We still have lots of learning to do, but it was a fun start!

Ask your child: What does it mean if 2 lines are parallel?  What are some shapes you learned about this week?

Playing shape capture

February 20th

Thanks for coming back! It has been a crazy couple of weeks with Valentine's Day, conference prep, Presidents Day off, and student-led conferences; but hopefully we're back on track with the blog!

Reading 

This week we looked at the theme of the books we are reading. We read Thank You Mr. Falker as a class and discovered that the theme was perseverance. Then students watched Brave Irene on Storyline Online (on our website!) and decided what the theme was of that story. It's been so much fun exploring theme!

Writing

We spent this week exploring informational writing. As a class we read a book about the Polar Lands and wrote informational facts that we learned. At the end of the week the students created lists of topics that they were experts on and started their own informational writing.

Math

This week was spent measuring and comparing measurements. The students measured objects around the classrooms and themselves to practice measuring in centimeters, inches, feet, and yards. We also discussed how to decide which unit of measurement to use (ex: centimeters for small objects like erasers and yards for big things like our whiteboard).

Social Studies

This week we wrapped up our learning of Then and Now the class really loved comparing schools, transportation, and family life from long ago and what we have today. They also had some fun ideas for how to make transportation and kitchens more effective in the future!