On Dr. Seuss day, we read lots and had fun! We even ate green eggs and ham! :)
Social Studies/Science:
We ended our American Indians unit with a huge project that showed everything we knew about the Pueblo, Lakota, and Powhatan tribes. Students created four triaromas; one for each tribe and one to show the commonalities about the three tribes. Students then wrote a few sentences to capture the essence of their project.
We discussed weather next. Students learned how to read a thermometer and how to view a website to get the temperature, wind speed and direction, and the forecast. We sang a song about the weather cycle to the tune of Oh My Darlin'. Students now know that precipitation is part of the water cycle and can be in the form of rain, snow, hail, and sleet.
We are now using our knowledge about weather and the American Indian tribe locations to learn about North America (and the other continents). We are joining forces with Ms. Carew's class to study continents and oceans over the next few weeks. Students are asking wonderful questions and getting a sense of the location, weather, biomes, and a few cities within the continent.
Ways to help at home:
- Find books or videos on continents or oceans.
- Have your child tell you all they know about the continent.
- Create a map of a continent we have studied.
Word Study:
We enjoy activities in word study each day. We are now even typing our words on the computer every other week! Please let me know if you have any questions about the sorts that are going home.
Writing:
Most students enjoy writing time! There are few who have a hard time finding ideas, but then they use my story dice app and hurry back to their desks to write.
We have focused the year on writing stories with a character introduction, a detailed setting paragraph, a problem paragraph or two, and an ending with more than just one sentence. Students are still trying to understand writing a complete sentence with a capital letter and punctuation, but they are getting very good at writing paragraphs on one topic. This story structure helps them with that idea.
Ways to help at home:
- Ask students to write complete sentences about their day. Be sure they capitalize and add punctuation.
- Keep a journal of fun events.
- Write a letter to a relative. Be sure they use a proper letter-writing format.
Reading:
Students continue to work on comprehension. A recent project included creating a character hand, a setting bookmark, and a problem/solution foldable. For the character hand, students trace their hand, write the character's name in the palm and five character traits, one in each finger. Lastly, they draw a detailed picture of their character. The setting bookmark is a detailed picture of one setting within their book. The problem and solution are explained and illustrated in the foldable. This is a great way for students to think about summarizing their book.
We have recently started talking about making predictions. I prefer that they THINK about it a bit first. Students read for about 10 minutes, then they choose one event that is taking place in their book. Next, they use all the schema that they know about that event, then they make a prediction based on the event and their schema. For example, we are reading a book called A Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop. In the beginning of the book, a boy is given a castle with a silver lead knight, which is about 2 inches tall. We brainstormed our schema - what we know about castles and knights and realized that castles are enormous and knights usually dress in metal armor. We also connected wizards and dragons to stories about castles and knights. Our prediction is that the boy will somehow join the knight in protecting the castle against dragons and magic.
Ways to help at home:
- As always, continue to have your child read between 20-30 minutes per day.
- Make predictions using events in your book and your schema.
- Create fun projects! If reading about a castle, build one with cardboard boxes!
Math:
We continue to move along in math. Students are being exposed to numbers up to 999! We are currently working on addition up to 150 and they are doing very well. Although some students still need to draw a ten rod and ones, most students are now using numbers to solve problems. I have recommended they start with ones, move to tens, then to hundreds. This will get them to think this ways so when they are introduced to the algorithm, they begin with the ones, then the tens, then the hundreds. Here is an example:
128 + 34 = ___
ones: 8 + 4 = 12 (we have created a ten, so we add it first in our next step and now have 12-10 = 2)
tens: 10 + 20 + 30 = 60
hundreds: 100
Now add them all together 100 + 60 + 2 = 162
Most of the work we do is through word problems or games. The word problems builds their ability to problem solve. The games focus on strategies to solve the word problems.
We have also been working on graphing data. Students remembered a bar graph from first grade and were introduced to a line plot! We used everything from cubes to colored Goldfish!
Ways to help at home:
- Ask your child how to play Capture 5!
- Continue to work with your child on telling time (we have been working on time to 5 minutes) and counting money.
- Continue to allow your child to work on ST Math at home, which will greatly build their number sense!
- Not many students are using Reflex Math, so please don't forget to build fact fluency at home.
