Aril 20th-24th

Hello and happy last full week of April. We celebrated earth day on Wednesday with 4 stations and 4 really great lessons about birds. We learned about different species of birds, bird beaks, migration, nests and more. It was a beautiful day for an outside adventure. We were even able to put one of our lessons to use already this week! We had a bird repeatedly running into our window so we put up a big black paper bird. It worked! It scared the bird away and it stopped running into our window. So glad we were able to learn about that just one day before!

Thematic Centers:

This week for our author's unit we studied Helen Lester. She wrote many famous books that I bet are in many of our homes. Her books are full of many great morals. Tacky is a class favorite, so of course we read that this week! Do not forget that in honor of Tacky and Helen Lester, tomorrow is TACKY DAY! We rotated through 4 centers:

1. Trace and cut out a penguin. Cover with tissue paper!
2. Pick 1 tutorial of how to draw a penguin step by step and draw one. Write 3 penguin facts.
3. Go on a "sound walk" and listen for different things like a dog, plane, car etc. This is because we read the book Listen Buddy which was about being a good listener.
4. Play a board game called "Good Manners" that allows you to move forward when you 'use a good manner' and it makes you move backward when you 'do something mean.' This game goes with Hooway for Wodney Wat which is a book that talks about treating your friends nicely and using good manners!

Reader's Workshop:

We are still working on individual reading goals and passion projects. We even had a few guest readers from the middle school come over and read individually with us. What a treat! We have kids starting to "finish" many of their writing pieces for their bare book which is exciting. Right now, most of us are in the editing process. It has been neat to hear everyone talk about publishing their pieces. They are so excited to show their friends and family members!

We are also almost done with out 1st grade handwirintg books. Yahoo!

Math Workshop:

This week we learned a new game that works on addition and subtraction. You pull out a "target number" and place it at the top of your game board. These target numbers are 30's-90's. After that you pull out 6 random numbers in the single digits and place them on the game board below the target number. Then you play around with the 6 numbers using addition and subtraction to come up with the target number. The kids loved this! It was a real brain teaser.

**It may appear that we have not done as much as we usually do because we are really practicing for this play! We try to run through everyone's lines at least once (but usually twice) each day. We also practice all 4 play songs twice a day too. We really want to be ready for the show next week!

**Do not forget to practice play lines! Our play is on April 30th in the gym at 11:00. Afterwards we will come back to the classroom for refreshments and the gallery crawl.

**I have decided to open scholastic for the rest of the year to anytime you want to place an order. Just email me after you put a book order in and I will go in and submit it!

I will not be at school tomorrow as I have come down with stomach bug symptoms. Watch for that yucky bug going around! I thought all this stuff was supposed to leave when we said goodbye to winter. :) Don't worry though. We have been cloroxing like crazy with the hopes it will not spread!

Poem in Your Pocket Day: April 30th We will be celebrating this at school! Please allow your child to carry a poem in their pocket on this day. It can be handwritten, copied, typed etc. It can be a new one, a memorized one or an old favorite. Short or long...it does not matter! We just want to celebrate the beauty of poetry!

Have a happy weekend!
Mrs. Schultz

April 13th-20th

Welcome back! We have had a rainy week but a busy week as we jumped right back into our schedule on Monday. We started a new unit this week. Our last unit for the year! We had a field trip and we were picked on Monday to raise the three flags with Paw Paw. At school there is a CSD flag, a NC flag and of course the USA flag. Our field trip to see the organ was neat. We learned the three main pieces to an organ are the air, pipes and keys. We got to hear several songs and even a few skits!

Thematic Unit:
We finally caught everyone up with their art gallery artwork and we are ready to move on to author's. This is our last unit for the year! We will study 3 authors total. We started off with Ezra Keats. We read several books by him and rotated through four centers.

1. Read Snowy Day and answer (with a teacher) comprehension questions and discuss setting, characters, plot etc.
2. Read A Letter to Amy and write a letter to someone special. If families can mail these if they need to be mailed, that would be awesome! We also discussed different "rules" for writing letters. How do letters begin and end? What is an indention when writing a letter? How do you address an envelope?
3. Read Peter's Chair and re-create one of the scenes from the story using paper and other supplies from the "junk box." These came out so neat and we decided to hang them in the classroom. They look like Ezra Keats did them himself!
4. Create a Mister Big Face puppet from Hi Cat and write what the character did in the story.


Math Workshop:

This week we are still studying fractions. We reviewed rules for dividing into halves and fourths. We also used new manipulatives called "c-rods." We figured out how to divide certain rods into halves, thirds and fourths. For a challenge some students worked on fifths and beyond. It was neat! We learned the terms numerator and denominator for fun and added those words to our fraction vocabulary. Even though thirds is not on our report card, we also added this in because of so many wonderful conversations that were being held during our math talk. We even discovered 4/4 is the same as one whole! We had the same tubs as last week and we started pulling small math groups to review subtraction and addition, geometry, time and other math concepts we have covered this year.

Reader's Workshop:

We are still working on bare books! We have moved on from the dash facts and we are writing "meaty" stories, non fiction pieces, poems and more. The editing process takes a while but has created so many wonderful conversations. Punctuation and capitalization are coming more naturally as we are writing so much each day. We are also still reading our leveled stories and working on comprehension as well as reading strategies. We are working on handwriting daily and everyone's letter formation has dramatically imporved.

We also read many Ezra Keats books that we were able to compare and contrast. We looked at Hi Cat and The Snowy Day and discussed characters, setting, plot, solution and problem. We also loved looking at Ezra's wonderful illustrations that were made using all different textures and art supplies.

Poem in Your Pocket Day: April 30th We will be celebrating this at school! Please allow your child to carry a poem in their pocket on this day. It can be handwritten, copied, typed etc. It can be a new one, a memorized one or an old favorite. Short or long...it does not matter! We just want to celebrate the beauty of poetry!

**Please practice play lines!!! This is so important. It is such a busy time, but we want everyone to feel confident with their lines. :)

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

Dates to remember!

April 30th: Artist Play (in the gym) combined with the gallery crawl (in our classroom afterward)
        Hopefully we will get lines out ASAP.
May 5th: Our last visit to the Laurel's Nursing Home
May 12th: We will be going on a field trip to Hiddenite for gym mining!
June 2nd: End of Year Party (in our classroom)