November 17th-21st

Hello families!

Announcements:

We will be reading the book Stone Soup next Tuesday and making our very own soup creation. Look for a sign up genius tonight! We will be needing bowls, spoons, veggies, vegetable broth etc.

We are out for Thanksgiving break next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. There will be no volunteer sign up genius for next week because there are only two days. There will also not be a newsletter next week. No books or word lists either! We will be busy but because of a short week, we cannot maintain a normal schedule.

Scholastic books....place those orders! They are due soon!

Please remember to send your child to school with a coat! Gloves, scarves and hats are welcome as well. It is cold on the playground!

Thematic Centers:

This week we were studying football. We learned about the Manning family, equipment needed, field regulations rules and more! Mr. Jack came to talk to the class about football as well. He brought several different levels of jerseys, cleats, shoulder pads, gloves, a helmet, mouth guard and some of his ECU bowl rings. It was neat! We really learned a lot.

 

We rotated through 4 centers:

1. A mini book about the Manning family

2. Creating your own football helmet

3. Making your own cheer for a football game and presenting it

4. Creating a pennet for your favorite football team

 

Reader's Workshop:

This week we are still working on our individual reading goals and group word sorts. We also started thinking about how to dig deeper when reading. We are thinking about how to comprehend text and we are learning several strategies to help us. The following strategies have been discussed and practiced both individually and whole group:

 

1. Spinner Spider: Make connections as you read to what you already know (text to text, text to self, text to world).

2. Digger the Dog: Determine important ideas! Dig for important details, dig for important information about the author's message and dig/determine the facts.

3. Rocky Raccoon: Visualize as you read! Put pictures in your head as you read. See and think about the story like a movie going on in your head (What do the characters look like? The actions?)

 

Math Workshop:

 

We are still studying geometry! This week we learned a new game called "Fill the Hexagons." The goal of the game is to fill each hexagon with pattern blocks. To start the game the first player rolls the game cube. The player then takes that pattern block (on the game cub) and puts them anywhere on the game board. You need to think carefully because you cannot move later after your pattern blocks are already down! This game requires a little bit of luck but a lot of strategy and thinking.

 

Students also had to create their own shape using any 12 pattern blocks. This was tricky! Coming up with a design without a pattern was challenging but fun. Both of these activities worked on describing, comparing and naming 2-D shapes and decomposing shapes in different ways.

 

We also went on a shape hunt looking for shapes in and around the school! This was a blast. We found both 2-D and 3-D shapes and we are much more aware of why shapes are important. We even talked about the DMV and how the signs test relies on shapes!

 

Happy weekend and happy early Thanksgiving!

Mrs. Schultz