January 31, 2015

Classroom News:

• Penguin Plunge: February 7
• February 18: Delayed Start
• February 22-March 3: No School

Do you have an old pair of snow pants or boots? We could use them as extras for when students forget to bring some to school. Feel free to send them in and we will put them in the extra clothing locker.

 

Penguin Plunge

Winooski School District has a Penguin Plunge team made up of staff, students, parents, and other family members. I am doing it for the second year and this time around my aunt is joining the team too! I'm so excited to help support Vermont Special Olympics. Feel free to come on down to the lake on Saturday, February 7 to cheer on Team Winooski! Or better yet, join the team yourself! You can register, donate, or find out more information through this link:  Penguin Plunge.

Literacy

We finished up our study of how readers read nonfiction texts and we are back to looking at fiction. As usual, our focus is on how readers think about books and the questions they ask themselves. This month we take a close look at the characters in fiction texts. As we read we ask questions about the characters:

• What is my character doing?
• Why did my character do it?

We have closely analyzed the books Peter's Chair by Ezra Jack Keats and Knuffle Bunny Too by Mo Willems.

 

Math

We finished up our measurement unit and are not working on deepening our understanding of the number system and the many ways flexible mathematicians can work with numbers. 

One strategy for working with numbers is to create a "friendly number." This is a number that is easier to work with, for example the number 10. We call this strategy Make 10.

In the example to the left, the student is adding 6 + 9. They know that 6 + 4 = 10, so they take 4 out of the 9, that makes the new equation:

6+4+5=n.

10+5 is easy to add, so the student knows n=15.

By working with this strategy, students are becoming more flexible in decomposing (breaking apart) and composing (putting together) numbers.  Then, the students start applying this to story problems and addition equations with larger numbers.

January 4, 2015

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a fun vacation. I'm ready to be back and looking forward to seeing everyone!

Classroom News:

• Monday is library day. Don't forget to send back library books.
• Delayed start: Wednesday, January 14
• No School: Monday, January 19

Literacy

We had a new focus in December during read aloud and independent reading time. We've been learning all about nonfiction and we love it!

We read nonfiction differently fiction. Authors write nonfiction to teach us information. They do pictures, labels, headings, and words. Before reading, we look at all of this on the page to get an idea what the page will be about. Then we read the page and think about how the information goes with the rest of the book.

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As we read we ask ourselves:

• What is the author trying to teach me here?
• How do those two pages go together?

The students have loved our study and have learned really cool facts about a large variety of topics.  By understanding how nonfiction works, the students  are able to take control of their own learning and read about topics that interest them, allowing them to become experts. We will continue our study of nonfiction into January.

Project Based Learning

We finished our projects! The students investigated how to create a classroom to help us learn. They worked in groups of three or four to research the words in STARS. Each group chose an expert, developed interview questions, filmed the interview, and then created a poster to show what they learned. The posters came out great and are hanging in the hall. Make sure you check them out when you come into the building.

Math:
We have started our study of measurement. During this unit, we are learning how mathematicians measure objects and compare lengths of objects. The mathematicians have been working with partners to measure a variety of objects using different units of measure (paper clips, unifix cubes, and tiles).