Clouds & Coins

IMPORTANT:  TYE DYING SHIRTS AND CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS PROJECTS ARE THIS THURSDAY!  PLEASE SEND IN YOUR RUBBER BANDED T-SHIRTS AND CLEAR TWO LITER BOTTLES BY WEDNESDAY!!  I have to treat the shirts Wednesday!

Drew… our Star Student last week. :)

Last week we learned about the four main types of clouds:  Cirrus, Cumulous, Cumulonimbus and Stratus.  We are learning that meteorologists use sky observations and clouds to help predict the weather.  We read a book about Clouds and sorted different images of clouds based on the descriptive words used in the story.  This is called Close Reading.  The students have to base responses ONLY on information from the text, not on prior knowledge.  Here is what our sort looked like:

We will continue to study weather for the next two weeks.  In LMC we began a research project about an extreme weather condition.  The children have been paired with a Learning Buddy, and they chose one of the topics to research on Pebble Go:  Blizzards, Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Drought, Thunder & Lightning, Thunderstorms.  We will be doing a cute weather report that involves video taping and a green screen!!  We will have it ready for you to view at Open House on October 22!!  Here is research in the LMC lab:

In Reading, we have been focusing on characters and setting.  We have begun using our "Interactive Notebooks" during guided reading groups.  I hope looking through these notebooks will give you a glimpse of the comprehension strategy we are working on and how we used that strategy in the given story for that group.  I have only met with each group one time a week, but that will increase to 2-3 times each week.  On another note, I hope you received your Raz-Kids username and log in information.  The kids love this online program!  Remember to write a check mark on the calendar each day your child visits this site.  Next week we will begin learning about Non-fiction text features.  Here are the kids enjoying Raz-Kids:

In Writing, we have been working hard on our Autobiographies!!  We will be sharing them this Wednesday morning with a "first grade swap".  Four students will stay with me and the other students will go to different first grade rooms.  Joining the four that stay with me will be students from all the other first grade classes.  This is a fun way to show how exciting it is to share our writing with others.  We have learned about topic sentences ("a way to introduce the reader to our story"), stretching our stories with detail, labeling pictures and editing.  I'm so excited to show you these at Open House.  Next week we start our How-to Writing Unit.

In Math, I hope you have visited Dream Box with your child!  They were very excited about this opportunity…. please remember to write a check mark on the calendar each day your child visits this site as well.  We have been learning a lot about coins.  This seems like an easy topic to us, but it is actually difficult for many children.  We are focusing on the penny and nickel.  I use large magnet coins while the kids use real coins to find the total value of a group of pennies and nickels.  We "exchange" five pennies for every nickel and try to show the value using the least number of coins.  Our Unit 2 test is scheduled for NEXT WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY.  There are two parts to the test.  A review will be sent home next Tuesday.  Here are some pictures of the kids playing "Penny Nickel Exchange Game" with their "Learning Buddies."  I hope you have a wonderful week!