Week 4

I hope you are enjoying the sock hop tonight. I know the students were excited about it. Hoping the weather stays nice for everyone. Let's take a look at week 4 in Mrs. Langham's room.

We are developing a routine for our day. We start out with our phonemic awareness activities now instead of writing. This allows for me to get guided reading done before we go to specials. Now we do writing after specials and right before lunch. We are working on segmenting compound words, identifying initial and final sounds, rhyming and phoneme substitution. The children are actively engaged with hand motions for each activity. We then focus on our letter of the day. Here are the letters we learned this week.

After phonemic awareness, we go to Daily 5. This week, Mrs. Langham pulled groups for guided reading. We worked on letter identification, letter sounds and rhyming. Each day, we are given a new book to put in our book boxes. We read our book boxes during read to self time. We practiced tracking words in our books with our fingers as we read. Our sight word this week was "I". We have also been working on sight words "see", "like", "can" and "to". We have been doing some guided writing at the end to practice our sight words.

Our close read this week was Rainbow Fish. We read this every day, discussed vocabulary, author's purpose/lesson learned and compared and contrasted how Rainbow Fish felt at the beginning and the end of the story. There was a lot of good discussion with our turn and talk partners. We finished with a culminating craft by making a rainbow fish.

 

 

Some of the other books we read this week to support our writing lessons are below.

 

In math, we learned a new game called Race to Trace. We pulled our ten frames card and traced the number pulled. The first one to trace all numbers was the winner. This game worked on both number identification and number writing skills.

We started focusing on individual numbers and ways to represent each number. We later worked on combinations and were introduced to the + and = signs.

We had fun going on a tens frame hunt in our classroom. We found the tens frame and recorded the information on our sheets. 

In social studies, we learned about the constitution. We read the book We The Kids.

We wrote our own class constitution and signed it too.

In science, we finished up learning about tools by practicing to use the balance scale.

We literally had a "blast" with our Diet Coke and Mentos experiment. We practiced making predictions and recording information. We repeated the experiment using M&Ms and got a slightly different result.

We began learning about the 5 senses.

We specifically focused on the sense of sight. We practiced using kaleidoscopes and illustrating what we saw. We also got to use real Braille books and learned that people who cannot see are blind and use these to read.

Next week, we will be learning about colors. We ask that you dress your child in the following colors each day to help reinforce their learning. You should have also found a schedule in the take home folder.

Monday 9/22 red

Tuesday 9/23 blue

Wednesday 9/24 yellow

Thursday 9/25 green

Friday 9/26 orange

Monday 9/29 purple

Tuesday 9/30 pink

Wednesday 10/1 black and white

Thursday 10/2 brown

Friday 10/3 rainbow

Week 3

We are really starting to learn the rules and routines in class. Let's take a look at some of the fun learning happening this week.

In language arts, we continued practicing 1:1 tracking. We made several books for our book box and have been practicing reading them during Daily 5. We started going to our Daily 5 rotations this week while Mrs. Langham pulled students and did some informal testing. The centers included word work, read to self, work on writing and the listening center (either on the computer or iPad).

We learned these letters. Your child should be able to identify the letter and the sound and show you the action of each of these letters.

Our close reading book was The Three Little Pigs. This version was a bit different than the story we are familiar with. The wolf ate the first two pigs and tried to trick the third little pig by asking him to pick turnips, pick apples and going to the fair with him. Ask your child to tell you about it.

Our vocabulary from this story that we learned were the words "fortune", "bundle", "blazing" and "huff". We read other versions of the story too and then we shared with our partners how the stories were alike and different.

We wrote new ending for a three little pigs story too. Some of the students were very creative.

In math, we continued to practice our number writing on white boards.

Mrs. Langham would show us a ten frame and we would have to write the number.

 
We also used manipulatives to create numbers on the tens frame. Mrs. Langham would show us a number and we had to make it on the tens frame.

We had a visit from Zero the Hero on the tenth day of school and we made our Zero the Hero books.

Each day, we do a whole group activity and a practice page. We do a math page independently and we have been learning to solve problems in our math journals. The math journals went home today. These will come home every two weeks so that you can see what we have been working on. We did an assessment test today to make sure we are learning our math facts. It was serious business with privacy folders too, LOL.

In science, we practiced using tools. We predicted the number of drops of water we could fit on a penny and then we recorded the amounts that we could fit.

We practiced using our hand lens and recorded our observations.

Our favorite science lesson this week was our Kool-Aid fizz experiment. We saw a chemical reaction when we mixed baking soda, Kool-Aid and water.

 

In social studies, we were lucky to have the Boy Scouts lead us in a tribute to September 11th at morning assembly. We discussed this a bit further with a non-violent Power Point lesson to help us learn about heroes. We had fun coloring pictures of our heroes too and we learned that our heroes don't always wear capes.

Other highlights included our first trip to the library. We got to meet our librarian, Mrs. Pustka for story time. The students will be able to check out books and take them home next Tuesday. This week, the books they checked out stayed in the classroom.

Our first trip to the computer lab was so exciting. We get to go every Thursday. We practiced going to Tumblebooks and listening to stories this week.

We were disappointed that we did not get to go to Hill Harbor again. One of these days, the weather will cooperate.

Thank you for all those who have signed up for parent conferences. I sent out an e-mail about how to sign up through VolunteerSpot. There are directions at the top of the blog under Fall Conferences too.

Picture day is this coming Wednesday, September 17th. We have our pictures taken at 9:00. You can order pictures by filling out the envelope that was sent home this week and selecting a package. Pictures must be paid for BEFORE the picture is taken. You may begin sending in these envelopes whenever it is convenient for you. I have a collection order form.

Also, I will send in Scholastic book orders tomorrow, so if you would like to purchase books, please do so online today. It is always so much fun for your child to receive a new book at school. There are some books for only $1.00 too. What a great way to reward your child for their hard work and to encourage reading.