February 23rd-27th

Hello and happy snow day!

"Mr. Jack" and I have been enjoying our first snow in our new house. I hope all of you have been having fun enjoying the weather.

I want to thank everyone for coming to the play yesterday. It was truly magical! After everyone left, we had a reflection and the kids talked about how much they learned and about all the fun they had. Thank you for taking the time to practice their lines and for supporting them yesterday.

Math:

This week we really focussed on perfecting the play but we also had a few lessons squeezed in the short time. For math, we learned about adding 10 more to a number and also learned about subtracting 10 less from a number. We used the hundreds chart at first and then we did this mentally. We had touched on this before but really worked on it this week. For children who needed a challenge we asked them to add 20, 30 and 40 more mentally. We had the same math tubs as last week.

Reading and Writing:

For reading, we got through a few kids with leveled books and we got out 10 new word study words. We did not get through our word sorts. Hopefully we will have a "normal" week next week and we will be able to do this. For writing, we learned about comics! Ms. Leslie gave us some really neat templates for writing comics and making speech bubbles. A huge hit! We also wrote thank you letters to military personal and gave them to the middle school practicum who is doing this as a service project. We edited these letters closely making sure to have site words spelled correctly, appropriate punctuation and capitalization. 

Thematic Centers:

This week we learned a lot about Eleanor Roosevelt. She had a heart of gold and was always thinking about others. We rotated through 4 things:

1. Make your new sew scarf to donate to a homeless shelter.

2. Pick up trash around the school with gloves and a trash bag.

3. Illustrate an Eleanor fact book.

4. Write and illustrate "I can _______ to make the world a better place. 

We also started brain storming for our bare books. This year we are doing something really neat with our bare books and we need your help! Please see the important letter in my email and pay close attention to the date we are asking that you have your items in. We really need to make sure everything is labeled as well!

Hugs,

Mrs. Schultz

February 2nd-6th

Hello!

There are lots of announcements so grab your calendar!

1. Winterfest is this Friday and should be lots of fun. We do this at school and parents do not need to come! :) Sorry for the miscommunication!
2. Play is February 19th at 11:00 in our classroom.
3. Our valentine's party is February 11th at 1:45. Come and join us if you can!
4. Please remember to send in your fleece fabric as we are making scarves soon.
5. This Friday is spirit Friday! Wear your spartans apparel and show your pride.

Thematic Centers:

This week we finished studying Helen Keller and started the Wright Brothers. We learned they were the first to have a successful flight! We rotated through 4 centers:
1. Make a candy airplane and write where you would like to fly to and why.
2. Illustrate the Wright Brothers' fact book.
3. Make a paper airplane and measure the flight distance.
4. Label the parts of an airplane.

Reader's Workshop:

This week we have been working on making connections to the stories we are reading. We worked on making text to self connections and text to text connections. A text to self connection would be: "I can relate to this story because I have a dog at home too!" A text to text connection would be: "This part of the book reminds me of the Eric Carle book we read last week. This book has a butterfly just like that book did."

For hundreds day, we also worked on a poem. This month's writing theme is "authors as mentors." We chose to start by studying Eric Carle as he has beautiful illustrations. Many children have chosen to write just like him this week!

Word study words this week are: fun, trade, robe, wash, baby, ring, kiss, toy, like and will
*Please do not forget to review the older words at home frequently as well. This really helps with reading and writing! We review a little here at school as well but as you go over your new words each week, it would be helpful to do a review of older words.

Math Workshop:

We played two new games this week and we loved them.
1. Out of this world: Draw a star card and place it in the middle. Use the hundreds chart to write the number above, below, to the left and to the right on the hundreds chard. Race against your partner or play on your own. This is getting us more comfortable working with the higher numbers.

2. Fact Families in Outer Space: Pull a card with three numbers and complete the 4 fact families as quickly as you can by yourself or with a partner. These are just like last week but you get to use a visa vi marker and a cool game-board!

These two games work on addition, subtraction and numbers up to 100. We also started working with time. Half hour and hour only! We are talking about this right before math starts and during morning meeting. If you want to talk about this at home, that would help us greatly! We discussed the short hand, the long hand and minutes versus hours this week.

Short week next week as we have conferences! No school Thursday or Friday.

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

January 26th-30th

Hello! It has been a busy week so far. We really enjoyed the play yesterday at the Children's Theatre! It was a mix of Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse and Julius the Baby of the World. It was neat. Thankfully we read both books before we went so we could understand the plot.

We are busy assessing and getting ready for report cards and conferences in room 134. The conference sign up has been sent out. If we did not meet last time, I would really like to meet this time. Thank you!

Please continue to practice the play lines. We want everyone to feel comfortable saying their lines. :)

Thematic Centers:

This week (and continuing through Monday) we will be studying Helen Keller. What a marvelous hero! We learned that she was blind and deaf. We spent time thinking about how hard this would be and we could not imagine. We read many non fiction books about Helen and rotated through 4 centers:

1. Walk around the school blind folded with a teacher and experience what it would be like to navigate the world blind.
2. Take a cracker and spread icing on it and use skittles to spell the letters of your name like they would be spelled in braille.
3. Make and read a book about Helen Keller.
4. Spell your name like it would be spelled in braille using glue dots (then let it dry and experience braille).


Math Workshop:
We are working on our subtraction skills but taking it a step further. We have been working on coming up with different ways to get a number by using subtraction and addition. We have also been working on fact families just a tiny bit as we work on representing numbers different ways.
Example for the number 10: 10-6=4, 10-4=6, 6+4=10, 4+6=10, 10 tally marks, 10 on the number line etc. Our range cards from last year really helped with this!

This week we addressed these standards:
-generating equivalent expressions for a number
-using numbers and standard notation
-connecting numbers and standard notation to the quantities and actions they represent.

We have the same math tubs as last week. Many tubs are review as we pull teacher tables to learn new math concepts. Next week the tubs will change.

Reader's Workshop:
This week we are working on comprehension and retelling again. We reviewed our comprehension beanie baby strategies and we also worked on retelling those stories using writing. Like a summary on the back of the book, short retells of stories can help us decide if we want to read the story or not. To help us retell the story, we straightened out our left arm. With our right hand we patted the top of our arm and told the beginning of the story, patted the middle of our arm and told the middle of the story and patted the bottom of our arm and told the end of the story. Since summarizing is difficult it helped. We also talked about the main idea versus details of the story. As we are comprehending we need to pay attention to both!

We are back with word study, leveled books and word sorts this week. Words this week are:
thick, look, see, may, this, your, bad, love, short and wave. We practiced these words using carnation heart letters and then got to eat them!

Keep working on those valentines! If you can send in a shoe box or cereal box like you did last year to put valentines in that would be great! We will cut a hole and cover it to decorate it here at school. We are also learning this fun song for Valentine's Day! See below and have your child teach this song to you.

Have a great week!
Mrs. Schultz

January 12th-16th

Hello! Please remember that we do not have school this Friday, Monday or next Friday. Crazy schedule! I already sent the sign up genius for next week.

-Laurel's Field Trip: Tuesday January 20th...sign up if you can help!
- We are in desperate need of Clorox wipes. Send in pack if you are able.
- Children's Theatre Play: January 27th
- American Hero Play: February 19th at 11:00 ***Last week I accidentally wrote that it was the 18th. I was off by a day! So sorry!! It is actually Thursday the 19th. Hope you can be here to see your child preform in the first play of the year! Play lines will DEFINITELY go home Friday! We have a teacher work day, so I will be sure to get those done first. :)


Thematic Unit:

This week we studied Neil Armstrong. He was the first man on the moon! We discussed how this made a huge impact on the world forever. We also discussed characteristics that make a good hero. Everyone has the opportunity to be a hero! We rotated through 4 centers this week but we will also continue them next week as well since we got a little behind. We will not start a new hero next week due to our 3 day work week.

1. Astronaut helmet made of a paper bag. We also discussed oxygen and gravity on the moon versus the earth while we made our helmets.
2. Phases of the moon book. Did you know there are 8 phases? Watch the moon at night to see how it changes!
3. Shaving cream earth or moon painting. You could pick between painting the moon or the earth using the shaving cream paint. By adding shaving cream to the paint, it made the planet become 3d. After you painted, you had to add a sentence relating the moon to the earth.
4. Oreo moon phases. Take an oreo and gently break it apart. Scrape the icing off for each phase of the moon and discuss how it changes. Eat the oreo at the end!

We look forward to making moon sand next week and learning a little more about Neil!

Reader's Workshop:

This week we focussed on comprehension. We learned 3 main things about comprehension and tried to do a better job of understanding our books while we read.

1. When readers really understand, their reading voices sound smooth.
2. When readers really understand, they can picture what's going on.
3. When readers really understand, they can retell their stories easily.

We also edited more of our writing books this week as well. This month we are studying opinion pieces and how to write our opinion on a topic. Thinking of an opinion to write about is surprisingly hard! We discussed the difference about fact and opinion and looked a little deeper at Martin Luther King's opinion speech called 'I Have a Dream.'

Word Study words this week are:
must
was
has
have
had

Hopefully the last week of January we will start getting 10 words each week! With all the days of school we are missing, we are wanting to wait until we have a full week to start this.

Please lookout for a letter coming home soon about starting Bare Books. Remember last year how we worked for months on a book that your child wrote all on his/her own? We are doing that again this year, but it will be a little different. It will involve more time and supplies from home. This letter will be sent via email in the next week or so, so that we have plenty of time to finish. We will still work a lot at school on these books as well. No panicking. ;)

Math Workshop:

We are still studying subtraction this week and reviewing all the strategies we have learned so far. We are having a difficult time wrapping our minds around this topic, so we are taking our time learning it. We worked all week (to get through the entire class) on the true or false subtraction sheet. Last week we played a game with this and this week, we put it on paper to see what we learned. This took forever because it was a multi step process. First you had to solve the equation, then you had to decide if it was true or false, then you had to write the equation in the right column and then you had to check your work! We also worked on subtraction story problems as a class and in small groups. We increased the numbers we were working with from last week to make it a little more challenging.

Have a great week and weekend!
Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

January 5th-9th

Happy week back!

Announcements!

1. Be sure you check the school calendar this month. We have a few days off here and there.  January 16th, January 19th, January 23rd are all days that the kids do not come to school!

2. Work on those acrostic poems for Valentine's Day! If you need any help, please let me know.

3. January 27th: Our first big field trip! We are going to the children's theatre in Charlotte like last year. More info regarding chaperones will be sent out soon.

4. First play February 18th Heroes Play!! Our very first play of the year!! Play lines will hopefully be assigned this Monday! With my big move this weekend, it may be a little delayed. But I will do my best to get those out so you can start practicing.

Thematic Unit:
This week we hit the ground running. We started our new unit "American Heroes" and started with Martin Luther King. He was a great man! He fought for the equality of all people, no matter their race. We learned about diversity and how we are all equal. We also listened to a part of his long famous 'I have a Dream' speech. We rotated through 4 centers....

1. An egg experiment. Take a brown egg and a white egg and predict what they will look like on the inside. They look the same! Just like people look on the inside even if they have different skin colors.
2. Make two clouds. On one cloud write your dream and on the other cloud write Martin Luther's dream. Staple together and stuff with tissues so that it becomes a 3D cloud.
3. Martin Luther King mini book
4. Martin Luther writing sample: Write your dream on green line paper and glue on a piece of paper that has been stamped with two different skin colors of hands that are joining together.

Literacy:

This week in addition to our individual reading and writing goals, we learned how to summarize. This is hard work! First we started by summarizing different parts of one of our favorite upcoming play songs. Then we learned a "thinking stem" that can help us summarize. 'This book is about....' Then we tried summarizing our own writing books. This was neat but we definitely need more practice. You can summarize many things like poems, movies, books and songs. We are also working on acrostic poems. Hopefully practicing at school will help valentine writing go smoothly! We learned about adjectives and how they describe things. Adjectives are most definitely needed for acrostic poems.

Word study words this week: play, say, are, jump, make

Math:

We are still studying subtraction and all the strategies we can use to solve problems. We just started working on solving subtraction word problems. Just like our addition story problems, you must weed through the "fluff" to figure out what you need out of the story to solve the problem. We also added another piece to our game from before break called 'Roll and Record.' This time when you roll your dice and you subtract, you have to add your equation to the column where you record your answer. Then you get to see all the different combinations. We also played another game called 'True or False.' There were different subtraction problems listed and you had to determine if the equation was true or false. Example: 9-1=5 would be false.  8-2=6 would be true.

Happy weekend!
Emily Schultz

December 15th-19th

Pajama day and gingerbread house decorating tomorrow!! Do not forget!

Thematic Centers:

This week we did not have a specific theme. We wrapped out gifts for our families, worked on a gingerbread house made of paper and just enjoyed the week before break! We got out some of our favorite old centers like legos, blocks, cars etc. We were able to practice our cutting skills as well!

Reader's Workshop:

This week we really worked on organizing our writing folders. We examined all our books and writing pieces. We took books home that were finished and made a pile of things that we need to finish. We also chose one book to edit with an adult. We worked on adding punctuation, making complete sentences and making sure we have capital letters and adding details where necessary. We also worked on another acrostic poem and talked about other styles of poetry (including couplets like last year at Valentine's time).

We did not do word sorts this week but we did get our leveled book! Work on that this week.

Word study words this week are:
school
street
mother
time
hand

*There are LOTS of tricky phonograms in the words this week. TH makes a different sound in mother and the CH makes a different sound in school. There were lots of questions about these phonograms this week.

Math Workshop:

We have really been working hard on subtraction. We are working on finding what strategies we are most comfortable using. We played 3 games this week. The first two games we already knew how to play. Instead of adding we subtracted. The second game was brand new. We played:

5 in a Row: Roll a number cube and a dice. Take the bigger number and subtract the smaller number. Place your counter on the the number. You need to get 5 in a row.

Roll and record:  Roll a number cube and a dice. Take the bigger number and subtract the smaller number. Record that number on your sheet. Once you fill a whole row, the game is over.

Sports Ball: Roll two cubes. You can either add or subtract those dots to determine what number you want to land on. The first person to cover 10 numbers wins the game! This works on adding, subtracting and it helps with strategizing/solving problems!

Enjoy your long break! See you in 2015!
Emily Schultz

December 8th-12th

Hello families!

We were so excited this week that we got to attend two plays at school. We got to see the Nutcracker and our book buddies play. How special!

Announcements:

1. Please get your scholastic book orders in soon! They are due TODAY. This is a great time to order books for holiday gifts! The more you order, the more we can get for our classroom (which is really neat). We are doing online orders only this year.

2. Gingerbread house making and pajama day is December 18th. Please join us at 1:15 to decorate gingerbread houses! We still need mini milk cartons to pull this off. So far, we do not have any!

Thematic Unit:

This week we studied Wilma Rudolph. What a phenomenal women to study! Did you know that she had polio disease when she was younger? She later became known as the fastest women in the world. She had many brothers and sisters and overcame many obstacles in her life before she became a star. Even with her fame, she remained  humble and true to herself. We rotated through 4 stations.

1. Complete an obstacle course and try to bear your time with each round.
2. Illustrate your Wilma Rudolph fact book.
3. Create your championship medal and create 3 personal goals.
4. Trace and paint the olympic rings and study what the colors mean.

Reader's Workshop:

This week we have been looking at our writing in addition to our individual reading goals and word sorts. We have been discussing what it means to edit our own writing. Adding punctuation, capital letters where appropriate (and in some cases a brief synopsis on the back of what your book is about) are just some of the things we have been discussing. We have also working on our new phonograms. The tricky part here is not necessarily learning the rules....the tricky part is recognizing these in our reading and in our own spelling!

This week we went over "oo," "oy" and the silent e. We call the e on the end of words "strongman e." He is so strong that he makes the vowel in words say their name. In the word 'home' this week, strongman e makes the o say its name. Pretty neat!

Words this week are:
home
boy
dog
book
man

Math Workshop:

We have moved on to working on subtraction! We have learned various strategies and we also learned a new game called "counters in a cup". This game needs two players. The two players decide how many counters they are working with. They put some secretly in a cup and then the other player counts how many are outside the cup. That player then has to decide how many are in the cup. Students are likely to use their fingers or do this mentally. They also record their combinations. We are looking for several things with this one game. How do students figure out how many counters are hiding? How do students record their work? Do students understand that the number showing and the number hidden always equal the total number? Right now we are just trying to understand that subtraction is the opposite of addition. The total at the end will shrink instead of grow like in addition.


Our activities this week in math have addressed the following standards:

-Solving a problem in which the total and one part are known
-Finding and exploring relationships among combinations of numbers up to 10 (or higher for children who need a challenge)
-Developing counting as a strategy for combining two numbers
-Learning the (-) sign

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week and great weekend!

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz