This Friday, December 21st, is going to be Pajama Day in 1-Bu. Please check the email I sent last Friday for more specific information.
Here's what we were working on in the classroom last week:
Reading : We continued talking about fluency last week, and the students are really starting to get a hang of it. The three main things that we're focusing on in regards to the students' fluency are reading smoothly, giving characters different voices, and changing your voice for different ending punctuation marks (whether it be a period, exclamation mark, or question mark). Please reinforce this when reading with your child at home.
This week, we'll be spending some time discussing retelling. Retelling is a great way to monitor a child's basic comprehension of a text. We'll be talking about including the characters, setting, problem, solution, and main events of the story in a retell. When your child is done reading a story, have him/her retell it to you.
Writing : Last week we finished up talking about ways to add details to your writing. We discussed adding in characters' moods and sound words. This week, the students will be getting a writing piece reading for publishing. Ask your child which writing piece he/she has decided to publish.
Math : We spent time reviewing coins and telling time to the half hour last week. At this point, your child should be able to reliably count combinations of dimes, nickels, and pennies. He/she should also be able to tell time to the hour and half hour.
This week, we're going to start a new unit on measurement. The students always enjoy this unit!
Science : The students were really interested in the water cycle from our weather unit, so we decided to do some investigating with evaporation last week. We left out some water on a plate to monitor its evaporation. The students noticed that there were some mineral deposits left behind on the plate once all the water had evaporated. Then, we decided to see what would happen if we left out salt water to evaporate, since a lot of the water that evaporates in our global water cycle comes from oceans.. The students wanted to know if the salt would evaporate since it had dissolved in water. They were surprised to see how much salt was left on the plate once the water had evaporated, and they realized that must be why rain doesn't taste salty. On Friday, we left out some sugar water to see what would happen once it evaporated. Here are some pictures of the plain water and salt water plates once the water had evaporated:
Happy Holidays!