February 12 - Day 98

Hello Families!

I hope you're all looking forward to the long weekend!

Today in health, we talked about feelings.  We looked at different facial expression cards and tried to identify what the feeling was.  We then spent some time reflecting on when we've felt sad, happy, angry, and scared as part of a writing activity.

In math, everyone got to enjoy centers focusing around sorting by attributes, building composite shapes (hearts) with pattern blocks, exploring how the artist Romero Britto uses patterns by creating our own heart pictures, and using Mathletics.

We rounded out our morning by exchanging our cards.

During the afternoon we worked on "Thank you" notes for Australian firefighters before going to gym and music.

Reminder - !00th Day homework is due on Wednesday, February 19th!

Red Word List

RED Words – List 3b

Here is the fourth set of RED word.  These words are SIGHT words.  They don’t follow spelling or syllable patterns and are not decodable using phonics.  Students need to learn how to read and write them through memorization. 

Just a reminder we are working on recognizing them while reading (spelling will come later). 

If you like, you can cut apart the list and use them like flash cards.  I would also recommend that you have your child help point out these words to you while you are reading to them or when they come across it in the ‘real world’.

there	where
two	small
love	many
here	once
buy	worse
thought	talk

February 11 - Day 97

• Reminder that there is a bake sale tomorrow before recess.  All items cost $1 and we ask that no one brings more than $3.

• Tomorrow morning we will also be having our card exchange.

We are still hard at work completing our assets for our animation project.  Check out the pictures and see some of our work.  We have become experts at drawing 'our animal'.

100th Day of School Homework

Dear Room 5 Families,

On February 19^th, we will be celebrating our100th day of school.  We will be completing all sorts of fun math activities on that day!  In your child's back back you will find a Ziploc baggie labeled with your child’s name.  Please help your child fill this bag with 100 items, and have your child bring the collection to share with our class on February 19^th.  I will hang our ‘100’ collections on the wall in the hallway to display.  Collections could be anything – for example, paper clips, stickers, Legos, buttons, cereal, etc.  The possibilities are endless!

Monday, February 10 - Day 96

We've been hard at work storyboarding our animation and developing our 'assets' for our next visit with the PAW residency on Feb. 18. 

Our 100th day of school is coming up and some important 'homework' has come home tonight in the zippy folders. 

Just a reminder that tomorrow is one of the day's student council is hosting a bake sale at recess.  All items are $1 and we ask that each child brings no more than $3.  All proceeds will go to the Australian Wildfires.

Please also remember to send your child's zippy folder and home journal back each day.

Friday, February 7 - Day 95

Hello Families!

News

• Student Council is hosting a bake sale at recess on Tuesday and Wednesday.  All items will be $1 and we appreciate your help by not sending in more than $3 each day. 

• Valentine's Day name lists were sent home last week.  Please remember if you are planning on making Valentine's Day cards with your child that you will need to include one for everyone in the class.  We will have some time on Wednesday morning (we have music and gym in the afternoon) to pass out the cards.

Feb. 7

We had a very productive morning working on our animation project.  Students worked really hard on drawing out their animals or "assets" to use during our next PAW time on February 18th.  We have been focusing on how to draw realistic animals that really show how they have adapted to living in a cold environment.

Curriculum Update

Math

Grade 1:  Students have been focusing on developing their conceptual understanding of adding and joining things together.  In the next week or two we will be moving towards using tools like 100s charts to help us with adding larger numbers.  We will also be working on the benchmarks 5 or 10 to help make adding numbers in our head more efficient.  

Grade 2:  Students have been working on developing a conceptual understanding of equality and inequality using addition and subtraction equations.  Students have been using balances and blocks to physically show how balance out equations.  In the next week or two we will be developing our algebraic thinking by using what we know about equality to discover missing numbers in number sentences.  

Reading

Students have been worked in leveled groups on a variety of skills such as decomposing compound words, letter and vowel sounds, and comprehension strategies.

Writing

We have continued to use story workshop as our springboard to enjoying writing.  We have worked on making sure we are thinking about setting and characterization.  As students progress in their skills we are individually working on self-editing and elaborating to make our work more enjoyable for our readers.

Science

We have been working on the 'Hot and Cold' unit for science.  Ask your child about our blubber demonstration.

Social Studies

We have been working recognizing rural, urban, and suburban communities.