August/September
How can you praise your
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Reading
Students have been working on mastering our Reader's Workshop routines. We have been practicing independent reading, listening to reading, and partner reading. Students have also learned how to choose "Good Fit Books" using the I-Pick method. This month we are learning about plot and understanding characters feelings and traits in a story. We also began reading groups to meet each individual student's reading needs. Here are some questions you can ask your child while you read to them or after they read to themselves to support what we are doing in class: What is the problem in the story? What is the solution in the story? What is the high point (climax) of the story? How is your character feeling and how do you know? Was it something the character thought, said or did? How would you describe the character and why? |
Writing
August/September Do you know how to keep a reader turning the pages? That is the driving question we are focused on during our first unit in narrative writing. We started our year off as authors writing about our shared experience with a blind trust walk. We wrote a bold beginning, used transition words, and an excellent ending. We've been brainstorming ideas for stories and learning about the writer's process. Students have been planning their narrative stories using a graphic organizer and then writing their story in their writer's notebook. We will continue working on skills of how to write a personal narrative , as students begin to incorporate interesting adjectives and dialogue into their stories. Later this month, students will experience writing a fictional narrative, by writing about a silly animal . We will use books as a guide to help us come up with ideas and use those to create silly animal stories. After that we will become editors and closely examine our work looking for capital letters and end marks - adding them as needed. Each student will individually conference with a teacher to discuss their work. Our last step will be to create a final published piece and artwork that we will proudly hang in the hallway. |
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Math
In math, we have begun our first unit and together we will be climbing math mountains as we conquer addition and subtraction within 20. We will be working on fluently adding and subtracting within 20, odd and even numbers, adding three or four one-digit addends and solving word problems. It’s going to be a fun unit of learning! There are many ways to help your mathematician at home: - Quiz your child on all the partners/addends to 10 - Practice math mountains together (see the video to the left) - Give your child a math problem and ask them to explain their strategy |
Social Studies
We started the year with community building activities to get to know each other as a class. Each class has a class name and a symbol that represents them. We have enjoyed listening and learning about each students' culture and how it represents who they are from their culture boxes. We will continue learning about each other in the next part of our unit where students will become cartographers using the mapping skills they are learning in our geography lessons to create a "Me Map". Students will learn more about symbols, compass rose, map key, and map design. |
Science
Ask your child to share with you all the ways that a seed can be dispersed! Through this unit on My Place in the Community, we have been discovering the important role that plant diversity makes in our world. Students started by investigating the needs of a plant given a variable (no water, no light, light and water, no light with water etc. ) and recording the long term effects this has on a plant. These needs were then used to help us discover the importance of seed dispersal and how a seed needs to move away from the parent plant. Students went on a seed hunt, collecting seeds and learning about how the structure of a seed can give us clues to whether it is dispersed by water, animals, wind, or explosion. After that, students used this knowledge to complete a seed challenge! In this challenge students had to a build a seed that would move away from the parent plant. We will continue our study of science with diving into habitats and learning about what kind of habitat will best support the growth of seeds! |