Here's what we were working on in the classroom last week :
Reading : Last week, we spoke all about getting our minds ready to read. Just like athletes warm up their bodies before performing or competing, readers should warm up their minds before reading. This helps the reader get as much out of the text as possible. We spoke about using the title and author of the book, the picture on the cover of the book, and the blurb on the back of the book to help get your mind ready. We also spoke about going on a book walk. This helps familiarize you with the layout of the book and the basic story line by looking at the pictures. Before you read a book with your child at home, take some time to get your minds ready!
Writing : The students published their first writing pieces! Last week, the students colored the pictures and shared their pieces with their classmates. On Friday, we started to familiarize ourselves with our next writing unit, which is Small Moments. I'll explain that a little bit more next week. :)
Math : We spent a lot of time working with number stories last week. We started off by learning about why it's important to label the units in a number story (i.e. what the numbers represent). Then, we learned about a 'start, change, end' diagram to use to help organize the important numbers in change-to-more number stories.
Science : We expanded on the students' knowledge of insects and their body parts by learning about spiders and their body parts.
Computers : Last week, we focused on a tricky skill on laptop/chromebook trackpads - dragging and dropping. Dragging and dropping is when you want to pick up something on your screen and move it to another place (thus, you're dragging something and dropping it somewhere else). The students experimented with a few different dragging and dropping techniques while playing a butterfly matching game and a math number grid game.
Here are some pictures from last week: