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).