Last week, 1-Bu celebrated World Kindness Day. 1-Bu created 120 kindness stickers and handed them out to people at school. They particularly enjoyed going up to the Board of Ed office and giving it to the people who work up there. Dr. Ben Dov even invited them all into her office! The students were quite impressed and happy to share the kindness.
1-Bu also had many other exciting events last week. On Monday, we had the smartboard on all day, watching Mercury cross in front of the sun. We also had a lesson with our Liberty Science educators. The students investigated the amount of light in each season by pretending they were the earth, on a tilt, rotating around the sun. On Thursday, Sarah Albee got the students very excited about being authors. She told them all about creating books. On Friday, a 1-Bu Pop Pop came and did a phenomenal presentation on NASA, teaching the students all about the Space Station and what it's like in space.
Here's what we've been working on in the classroom :
Reading : Two weeks ago, we wrapped up our first reading unit of the year. The unit was focused on the students developing good reading habits, and the students have done an amazing job. The students learned general reading habits that will help them increase their stamina and focus on books, word decoding habits that will help them become more successful reading unknown words, and partner reading habits that will raise the level of work done with their partners. To celebrate all that they had learned, we did some flashlight reading in the dark. The students had a great time.
Last week, we started our second reading unit. This unit will be a much shorter unit than the first, and will focus on word decoding strategies in greater depth. So far, we had spoken a lot about the importance of being aware when a word is 'tricky,' and taking the time to stop and solve it. We also spoke about using the word decoding strategies (that they learned in the last unit) in tandem with one another to become more successful.
Writing : Over the past couple of weeks, we have continued on in our Small Moment writing unit by focusing on adding details to our writing pieces. So far, we have gone over adding details about people's names, the setting, the size of objects, and people's feelings. The students have really begun to raise the level of their writing by adding in these details.
Phonics : We wrapped up unit 4 this week, which was all about bonus letters and glued sounds. You'll be receiving the assessment early this week.
Math : In unit 3, the students have been spending a lot of time focusing on adding and subtracting. First, we went over a new diagram, called 'Part, Part, Total,' which may help the students solve some number stories. Then, we spent a few days coming up with different strategies people use to solve number stories.
Here are some pictures from the past couple of weeks :