Happy Halloween!

In case you missed the party and parade...here's a little inside look!

Writing Process

We have been very busy writers lately!  We were immersed in texts by amazing writers who have taught us a lot about the writing process. Many of them struggled in writing as students, but they all agreed that the best story comes from our heart.  We spent a couple days gathering ideas by recalling some of our memories (both good and bad...ask your kiddo about my entry I HATE WINTER, haha) and people and places that are in our hearts.  Then we spent a day selecting an idea we want to explore further.  Either something we had more to say about, something we thought would be interesting for our readers, or something very close to our hearts.  Then we began collecting more information about our topics.  We thought about ways to make words more exciting in our writing, and we visualized and drew a detailed picture about our topic.  Later in the week we will focus on collecting vivid verbs and similes to help enhance our writing.  Drafting will begin next week  followed by revising, editing and we will be on our way to our first published piece.  It's been such a fun process!

Telling Time

What can you work on at home? Telling time!  Students should be able to tell time on the whole and half hour.  A good tip for students who confuse the minute and hour hands is the word "hour" is a shorter word/shorter hand and the word "minute" is a longer word/hand.  Students should also practice reading time as "half past" the hour (for example "seven thirty" can also be read "half past seven").  Showing students the relationship between the clock and fractions is helpful too!  30 is half of 60, which is why say half past the hour. We have also been practicing telling time in 5 minutes intervals.  The trickiest part about that is 45, 50 and 55 minutes past the hour.  Many students want to say it's an hour later then it actually shows because the hour hand is so close to the next hour...but it's not there yet!

Reader's Workshop

We have been such busy readers lately I haven't even been able to post about it!  During reader's workshop, we all come together for a read aloud and mini-lesson and learn or review a strategy to help become a better reader.  During this launching unit we have really focused on reading behaviors including keeping track of our titles and genres, recommending books to other readers and setting and working on reading goals.  Some goals are self selected and some are suggested by me.  After the lesson students have independent reading time to try new strategies and work on their goals.  During this time I meet with students to learn about their reading strengths and challenges.  This helps guide my instruction.  Our goal is for students to be engaged in reading for long period of time many times a day.  Not only does this look like eyes in a book and sound quiet, but it should look like students responding to their reading in their notebooks and trying new strategies on sticky notes and graphic organizers. It can also sound like students working on their reading fluency and accuracy quietly, After our independent reading we come together as a reading community and share our new learning, strategies, and efforts made as a growing reader.  It's really a great part of the day!

Representing Addition

We have spent the last couple weeks learning many different strategies for representing addition.  It is important students understand how to break two digit numbers apart into 10s and 1s.  For example, 26 is 2 tens and 6 ones and equals 20+6.  Knowing that will help students show what they know about addition using a hundred chart and a number line.  We always start with the biggest number, then add the tens, then the ones of the second number.  We also practiced adding the ones, then the tens of the second number but decided we preferred adding the tens first.  Our goal this year is for students to be able to represent numbers in MANY different ways, not just to memorize rules about adding and subtracting.  The more students work with breaking numbers apart and putting them together, the more fluent they will become with addition and subtraction.

Pushes and Pulls

We started our first science unit this week! Students will understand that forces make things move.  Throughout this first chapter students will answer, "What are pushes and pulls?"  They will look for examples in books, around the classroom, on the playground and even visualize pushes and pulls in places they cannot see to help understand how things move.  Students demonstrated that a push moves away and a pull moves closer.  We will continue to investigate motion and the affects of intensity, speed, and direction changes when objects start and stop moving.

Writer's Notebook

If you are looking for some inspiration for decorating Writer's Notebooks, here is mine!

Empathy

Last year we saw 5 episodes in the Class Dojo Series about Growth Mindset.  This year, Mojo and his friends are teaching us about EMPATHY! This ties in so nicely with Mrs. Hopes lessons and the Zones of Regulation! For updates on Mrs. Hopes lessons, check out her website:http://www.lz95.org/classes/thezonesofregulation_rhope/  
 
Here is Episode 1 in the Empathy series:

Community Helpers

We wrapped up our culture unit with a focus on Community Helpers.  Our goal was to understand and be able to explain how different workers help our community.  We learned that a community requires A LOT of different workers! We read about a variety of different workers and helpers on MyOn.

Count On Strategy

Our Big Idea in math right now is "Representing numbers in different ways helps combine and take away numbers." We are asking ourselves "How can we use facts we already know to solve other math problems?"  We have been learning about turn around facts, fact families, and count on facts for both single and double digit numbers.  For example we know 7+3=10 by counting on 3 from 7.  So we also know the turn around 3+7=10. Since we know the parts 7 and 3 make the total 10, we also know the rest of the fact family 10-7=3 and 10-3=7.  We can extend the count on strategy to double digit numbers.  For example we know 2+5=7, so we know 20+50=70 and 21+50=71.