Here's what we've been working on in the classroom :
Reading : We focused on fluency last week. In 1-Bu, we say that reading with fluency means reading like a story teller. To read fluently, we discussed that you have to pay attention to the 3 Ps - pace, personality, and punctuation. In regards to pace, you can't read too fast or too slow, but somewhere in the middle that's just right. For personality, you have to make sure that you give different characters different voices. Last, we always make sure we're paying attention to punctuation, and changing our voice for exclamation marks and question marks.
Writing : The students have worked hard getting their Small Moment pieces ready for publication. We're going to publish these pieces early in the week, and then start our How To unit.
Phonics : Over the last few weeks, we've been talking all about digraphs (when two letters make one sound). By now, the students should correctly read and spell the sh, ch, th, wh, and ck sounds. Have some fun - ask your child how he/she knows when to use ck. (He/she should be able to tell you that you use ck when there's a /k/ sound at the end of a word, after a short vowel.)
Math : In math, we took a deeper look at number lines and number grids. The students practiced skip counting on them and learned how to use them as a tool to help them solve various kinds of addition and subtraction problems. The students have also learned all about frames and arrows problems.
Science : Last week, we investigated daylight and how the amount of daylight changes with each season. The students collected some data about the number of daylight hours on various days/months throughout the year and created a graph to show their findings.
Technology : The students learned how to insert an image into a google doc last week!
Here are some pictures of 1-Bu last week :