Lots of growth to celebrate this week in room 3! We wrapped up another unit in Writer's Workshop where students learned about the craft moves of authors and added some of these elements to their own stories. The children took one of their books home this afternoon to celebrate and share with families. You'll notice that their stories focus on one small moment in time, and feature dialogue, thoughts, feelings, and suspense. Their writing has come so far!
In reading we started a new unit this week that will revisit all of the strategies we've learned this year to read longer, stronger, and more tricky words. The reading levels in our class have grown tremendously- so much so that I've had to reorganize the classroom library to sprinkle in even more books in higher levels. As your child's reading level grows they will learn to persevere when they come to words that make them struggle. When this happens the questions to ask are: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?
Speaking of making sense...this week we practiced counting CENTS in math. Whenever possible, have your child help you count change to reinforce this learning.
Your child may have shared the news that our class plant, Bulbo isn't doing so well. In fact we're afraid our bulb might be a dud. To show the children what our plant would look like if it were flourishing, I brought in another one I had growing at home. It will be fun to compare and contrast the two plants.
But to give the class a personal experience in our plant life cycle learning, we did an additional planting experiment today. The students planted two lima beans in a cup with soil and two lima beans in a moist paper towel in a plastic bag. On Monday, the children will predict what they think will happen to the lima beans in each place and we will observe and record our findings over the next few weeks! A special THANK YOU to Mrs. LeClair for organizing this science experiment. Parents, if you ever have a particular topic you're passionate about and would like to visit the class as a guest teacher, please contact me and I'd be thrilled to try and make something work.
In reading we started a new unit this week that will revisit all of the strategies we've learned this year to read longer, stronger, and more tricky words. The reading levels in our class have grown tremendously- so much so that I've had to reorganize the classroom library to sprinkle in even more books in higher levels. As your child's reading level grows they will learn to persevere when they come to words that make them struggle. When this happens the questions to ask are: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?
Speaking of making sense...this week we practiced counting CENTS in math. Whenever possible, have your child help you count change to reinforce this learning.
Your child may have shared the news that our class plant, Bulbo isn't doing so well. In fact we're afraid our bulb might be a dud. To show the children what our plant would look like if it were flourishing, I brought in another one I had growing at home. It will be fun to compare and contrast the two plants.
But to give the class a personal experience in our plant life cycle learning, we did an additional planting experiment today. The students planted two lima beans in a cup with soil and two lima beans in a moist paper towel in a plastic bag. On Monday, the children will predict what they think will happen to the lima beans in each place and we will observe and record our findings over the next few weeks! A special THANK YOU to Mrs. LeClair for organizing this science experiment. Parents, if you ever have a particular topic you're passionate about and would like to visit the class as a guest teacher, please contact me and I'd be thrilled to try and make something work.
We're growing up so fast in first grade, before you know it we'll be 100 YEARS OLD! Here's a little preview of what we might look like then.