The students (and I) were pretty upset that rain postponed our field trip last week, but we're going to try again this week! Please make sure to send the new permission slip back to school ASAP.
Here's what we've been working on in the classroom:
Reading : Last week, we learned all about how to get our minds ready for reading. We compared it to how athletes get their bodies ready. A runner doesn't just suddenly decide to go for a run and get up and go, he/she puts on certain clothing, plans out a route, and warms up his/her muscles. Successful readers do very similar things as well.
In order to set ourselves up for reading and understanding the book the best that we can, we get our minds ready before we read. We look at the cover and read the title and author. Have we ever read books by this author before? What were they like? What do we think the title of the book means? Does the picture on the cover give us an idea about what the book will be about and who some of the characters may be? We can also go on a book walk, quickly going through the pages in the book and looking at the pictures to get our minds ready for what sort of story/information this book will be about.
Do this at home when you read. Don't dive into a book straight away. Have your child stop and get his/her mind ready first.
Writing : The students published their pieces from the first writing unit last week! It's amazing how far they've come as writers in such little time. At the beginning of the year, many of them were only writing one page stories. Now, they're all writing at least three page stories and, often times, more!
We also started getting our feet wet in our next writing unit. Our next unit is called Small Moments, and it focuses on the students narrowing their focus and writing about small moments in time. This way, the students can work on adding more detail and description to their pieces.
Math : Last week the students learned a new math game called High Roller. It's a great game for the students to practice using the strategy of 'counting on' in order to solve addition problems. You can play this game (and all of the other math games we've done so far this year) at home! Look in the math section of your child's binder for instructions on how to play.
The students also learned about change-to-more number stories. I don't expect the students to have completely mastered filling in the change-to-more diagram quite yet. They'll get lots of practice using this diagram over the course of the year. At this point, your child should be able to correctly solve the number stories and explain how they found the solution.
Computers : 1-Bu hasn't had a lot of luck in the computer lab this year, which is why I've been leaving it out of the weekly updates. The students certainly have learned to be patient with technology. Last week, we got some luck, however! We were finally successful with logging in to the typing program that the students will be using this year. It's a program that can be used at home as well. If you get your child to the main Cherry Hill School webpage, your child should be able to navigate to TypingClub. If your child forgets how to do this or doesn't know his/her username and/or password, email me!
Here are some pictures of the students publishing their writing pieces last week :