January 8 - 12

Happy New Year!  I can't believe how quickly the last 4 months have gone.  I'm looking forward to a wonderful new year of laughing and learning with your child!

Curriculum Update

Language Arts

To kick off the New Year we read a great story called "Squirrel's New Year's Resolution" by Pat Miller. Squirrel doesn’t know what a resolution is, but happily Bear the librarian explains it quite well, both to her and to the book’s audience. Squirrel then visits her forest friends to see what resolutions they have planned and hopes she’ll be able to think of one for herself. This mentor text inspired the class to make their own New Year's Resolutions and Goals for 2018.

Writing Workshop

During Writing Workshop I explained that a resolution is deciding to do or not to do something in the New Year. We brainstormed resolutions or goals that we would like to work on in the New Year. The students started with a graphic organizer and then put their goals and resolutions into a paragraph, focusing on a topic, detail and concluding sentences.

Their good copies were written on balloons to represent the students "reaching" for their goals in the New Year. The students' balloons are on display inside our classroom if you'd like to stop by and take a look.  They turned out so cute!

The students also enjoyed writing about their Christmas Holiday during journal writing this week.

Reading Workshop

This week during reading workshop we read a non-fiction book called "Penguins". Often thought of as comical, penguins are actually very intelligent and fascinating animals. This book provided a great deal of interesting information about the types of penguins, their breeding and feeding habits, and the biggest threat to their existence. Incredible photographs supported the text. I used this book to model the reading strategy of "asking and answering questions" and the comprehension skill of "identifying main ideas and details." 

Congratulations to the students who flew to the next destination in our home reading challenge!

Math

This week in math we focused on double digit addition with regrouping. The students practiced adding two-digit numbers (using base ten drawings and the standard algorithm) which involved the regrouping of 10 ones blocks as 1 tens block.

 

We also played Slam Dunk to reinforce this concept.

Social Studies

In Social Studies we focused on the Quality of Life and Customs and Traditions of India. I modeled how to take information from the text and put it into their travel journals. Later in the week the students felt confident enough to work in partners to find the information.

We also had a lot of fun posing for our passport pictures. It was very hard to resist the urge to smile!

As well as adding their pictures into their passports, the students also glued in their India "stamps."

PE

Gymnastics was the focus this week during PE.

Art

Our art project this week was inspired by the movie Happy Feet and the book about penguins. The students painted a winter sky using a watercolour wash. 

Then on a separate piece of paper they drew penguins that were outlined with sharpies. 

Then the students  used black, grey and white chalk pastels to blend the color together to show VALUE.

Next week the students will finish their art by gluing their penguins to the painted paper. When glued on, they will add 2 ovals underneath the feet to create shadows.

Super proud of these two for reaching it to "role model" five times this year!

Congratulations to our Student of the Week. Way to go!