David Shannon Author Study!

This week, we had another author study and read books written by David Shannon. Here are some of the important things we learned...

 Our centers this week included finding and writing CVC words, reading the book No, David! and writing adjectives to describe David,  playing CVC games including "Say It, Pop It, Write It", writing about Bad Case of Stripes, meeting in reading groups, reading books on RAZKids, playing CVC BINGO, and more! 

In Reading, we were introduced to the comprehension strategy of visualizing. We made inferences to a poem about cats and drew the pictures we made in our minds as we listened to the poem. We make tet to self connections to a story, talked about punctuation marks, echo read to build oral fluency, and learned to self monitor for comprehension while reading independently. 

During Phonics this week, we focused on tapping out sounds and switching out beginning and ending sounds in words. We wrote the sounds we hear. We revisited the sounds for /t/ and /n/, learned the word "play", added the -s ending to make words plural, and wrote about the story Sam and Nan Play.

Our writing lessons this week focused on hearing and discussing good writing, visualizing 

and writing about animals, telling our ideas orally before writing, remembering to

write from left to right and leave spaces between words, and using sound spelling and our

sound and word wall to help us.

For the next few weeks in our mySci unit, River Rescue, we will figure out key earth science and engineering concepts as we identify the problem of water pollution in our area caused by humans. We will investigate the problem by identifying and sorting different items by their properties, and researching how garbage pollution impacts other living things. We will make connections between how the garbage pollution caused by humans can negatively impact other living things, but also how humans can make choices to help other living things! We will use what we've learned about the problem to develop and test solutions that push and pull objects out of the water. We will explore other creative environmental solutions around the globe, and share our ideas for how to clean up garbage in the Mississippi River. 

We continued working on teen numbers in Math, specifically how to decompose a teen number with tens and ones. 

 In this week’s Second Steps lesson,  we learned that a kind act is something we can do to help someone feel good. We practiced suggesting kind acts to do for people in different scenarios.

Encourage your child to think of a kind act they could do for someone, for example a sibling, grandparent, or neighbor.

Looking ahead...

Thanksgiving Break 11/26-11/28

Scholastic Book Fair 12/1-12/5 

Book Fair Family Night 12/1 4:15-6:30pm

Class Visit to Book Fair 12/3

Holiday Happiness Drive ends 12/12

Early Release Day 12/19

Winter Break 12/22-1/5

Have a great weekend!

Jena

Nocturnal Animals

Our thematic unit this week was a nonfiction unit! We focused on nocturnal animals.  Here are some of the important things we learned...

Our centers this week included finding nocturnal animals and writing them at Write the Room Center, sorting nocturnal and diurnal animals, playing CVC BINGO, reading books assigned to us on RAZKids, and writing about nocturnal animals using power words that we have learned.

During Phonics, we reviewed the sounds for /m/, /a/, /s/, and /p/. We learned the heart words "come" and "some", and read and wrote about the story At the Zoo.

In Writing, we practiced writing letters, words, and sentences and explored letter-sound relationships.  We wrote using the power words "is" and "my" as we wrote about our friends. We added the word "she" to our word wall and shared our writing with our class. 

In Reading, we listened to stories and retold the events in the beginning, middle, and end.  We also learned a new poem and practiced acting out the lines in the poem.  We echo read and chorally read the poem together and added it to our poetry books. We learned new vocabulary words including wade, sleepless, companion, and patient. We were introduced to suffixes (-less) and reviewed synonyms. 

In Math this week, we continued working on decomposing and writing teen numbers.  We focused on numbers 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.  

   We celebrated and honored our veterans at our Veteran's Day assembly. Thank you to all                                                                     who have served!  

In this week’s Second Steps lesson, we reviewed that we can use body language and context clues to figure out how someone is feeling. We also reviewed we can use slow breathing as a way to help ourselves feel calm when we encounter strong feelings.  Ask your child to tell you how they think others around them might be feeling, for example a sibling or a character in a story, a movie, or a TV show.

We continued our Social Studies unit on world holidays and traditions.  Ask your child which holidays/traditions are celebrated in Honduras, Egypt, England, and China.

Looking ahead...

Thanksgiving Break 11/26-11/28

Scholastic Book Fair 12/1-12/5 (more info coming soon!)

Holiday Happiness Drive ends 12/12

Have a great weekend!

Jena