Two Week Catch Up!

Welcome Back! 

I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend! Just a reminder- parent teacher conferences are next week! I am very excited to share your students' work with you. 

You will be receiving a confirmation paper in Monday's homework folders. See you soon! 

Here are a few things we worked on over the past few weeks. 

We have been doing many fun and interesting experiments in science while studying the phases of matter. Over the past two weeks, we learned and observed how matter changes phases. First, we looked at ice and dry ice over the course of one day. We've also learned about chemical reactions and how to identify when one has happened. To observe this, we activated glow sticks to see how a color is made, and combined vinegar and baking soda to see how the gas emitted can blow up a balloon. 

 We've talked about all the terms for matter changing, such as freezing, condensation, sublimation, and evaporation. To learn how these terms apply to real life situations, we observed condensation on mirrors, and turned liquid Kool-Aid into frozen popsicles. Our students have really been enjoying our science unit, and doing a great job engaging with the process of predicting and experimenting. 

In math, we've been working on skip counting by various numbers such as 2s, 5s, and 10s. To help us with fluency and speed with this skill, we play a game called count around. We choose a magic number to count up to, such as 25. Then, we stand in a circle and each person says a number as we go around (5, 10, 15, 20, 25). The person who says the magic number sits down, and the next person starts again at the beginning, until one person is left standing and declared the winner. This is a great game to play at home, even with a small group. 

Next week we'll be back to normal homework folders. Thanks for all your hard work at home! 

CONFERENCES

Parent-Teacher Conferences: 

 

Hopefully everyone received communication about upcoming conferences yesterday! 

Please use the link below to access Sign Up Genius if you haven't already chosen a conference spot. Looking forward to sharing your students' work with you all! 

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/904084AACAA23A57-fall

Spectacular Week Six!

What another great week in 107! They seem to be flying by, and we are making such great progress in all our work. 
This week, we started out celebrating a new month by decorating the bulletin board near our room for fall. All our students wrote book reviews about their favorite books and told why they liked it. Then, we put them altogether and thanks to Ms. Krissy's crafty skills, Voila! 

We've been having some fun in our reading groups "playing" with shaving cream in order to practice things like sight words, vowel pairs, and new vocabulary. Anything sensory is a great way to help kids retain what they're learning- so feel free to try this at home as you practice spelling words! Tracing words in shaving cream, salt or sand on a cookie sheet, making the words out of play dough, drawing them with sidewalk chalk, or painting the words are all great ways to help kids practice their weekly words, as well as make spelling a little more fun! :) 

  



One big focus this week was Writer's Workshop, where we published our first pieces of writing this year! All our kids have been doing a great job brainstorming and drafting stories from their lives, and this week we talked about revising and editing as part of the writing process. Finally, after many hours of hard work in our Writer's notebooks, we chose one story and published it. Lastly, we all walked around reading each other's amazing writing. It's so important for kids to build confidence and view themselves as authors, even at this early stage. Publishing a story is a big deal- be sure to read some of them when you come up into our hallway. 


In math, we've been working on telling time and counting pennies and nickels. These are really easy skills for you to have your student practice at home! 

Lastly, I want to show you some of the reading strategies we have for figuring out tricky words and building comprehension. We use these every time we read, and the kids are really familiar with them. The animals are a helpful mnemonic device to make sure our kiddos are aware of all the tools they have at their disposal as they learn to read. As you read with your child at home, I encourage you to let them try to figure out the words they get stuck on, and ask them to tell you what reading strategy they are using to help themselves figure it out. (Next week's homework folders will also include a copy of this bookmark to keep and use during your daily reading time.) 


Thanks again for visiting our page and seeing what we're learning each week! Check back on Monday for important updates in the homework tab.