Please don't forget that the students' Valentine Projects are due on Friday, February 10th. Thank you for those of you who have already handed them in!
Here's what we were working on in the classroom last week:
Reading : By now, the students have learned about three types of connections they may have with texts - text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world. The students are doing a great job coming up with connections as they read, which proves that they're really thinking about the texts that they're reading. In the classroom, the students are using post-its to track their thinking.
This week, we'll be switch gears and start our new reading unit, which is all about non-fiction.
Writing : We continued working on writing conventions last week. The students are getting better at editing their work to make sure it includes capital letters and punctuation marks.
Phonics : In the past couple of weeks, we have ventured into learning about long vowels and their spelling patterns. While I do not expect the students to have the long vowel patterns perfected just yet, I do expect them to be able to differentiate between a long and short vowel sound in a word. At this point, I'm just hoping that the students start to play around with long vowel spelling patterns when spelling words with long vowels. For example, if a student writes the word 'nale' instead of 'nail,' that's quite alright with me for now!
Math : We continued learning about comparison symbols this week (<, >, and +). We also talked about finding how the difference between two numbers.
Science : This week, we focused on the water cycle and how it plays into our weather. To go along with our weather unit, we took advantage of the snow on Tuesday and caught some snowflakes and examined them under magnifying glasses.
Here are some pictures of 1-Bu last week: