Fun Friday!

These are the final copies of our descriptive writing about a friend.  You have already received the web, first draft, writing checklist, and rubric for this writing.  We are learning that there are many steps to writing if you want a well organized passage.  I think the students did a fantastic job! (Remember to click on the photo to enlarge it.)

One of our centers today was a Halloween pop-up book.  We worked on the pop-ups today and will add the story later.

These students are listening to and reading Sherman Crunchley

Students are working independently on several different activities.

We made Halloween treat bags for our party next week.

A student brought in this game that helps us learn our math facts.  We thought it was a lot of fun.

One of our wonderful, caring grandmothers brought us supplies to make Christmas cards for soldiers who won't be home for Christmas.  It is a great way to instill patriotism in our students while brightening the Christmas of a brave soldier.  These are a few things the children wrote: "Thanks for all you do for America." , "Thank you so much for fighting for us." , and "We will think about you at Christmas."

 

     We also worked on double digit addition, finished up our SS lessons on community with our Junior Achievement volunteer, learned about the Resurrection, and made Play-doh!  Never a dull moment.

Visitors!

We had an early morning visitor during calendar time.  One of my old students came in to read a story to us.  He did a wonderful job and even brought a prop to help act out a part.

The volunteer from Jr. Achievement came and taught us about communities and businesses within communities.

Several students came forward to point out businesses that they recognized.

Those wonderful heroes, the firefighters, came to talk to us about fire safety.

This student is demonstrating how to get the attention of a firefighter by waving a stuffed bear while staying to the side of the window in case the glass has to be broken by the firefighter.

This student is crawling out the window to safety.

When smoke is coming in from under the door it is important to block it with a blanket.

        We were thrilled to get the fire hats and coloring books from our friends the firefighters!

                                                                                                                                     

Mr. Kershaw filmed the play and put it on youtube. Click this sentence to view it.

The Play's the Thing!

Our class is just full of budding Thespians.  This photo was taken just before our performance.  Many admitted to being nervous but we discussed how to turn the nerves into excitement and how to breathe deeply.  Everyone calmed a little and they did a great job!  Thank you to all the parents and grandparents who came, we hope you enjoyed it!

Our 5th grade reading buddies visited us again today.  This is the other half of the group that wasn't posted last time.  Check out the concentration on these readers!

It was a very busy, short week.  We are working on skip counting and grouping objects to skip count.  Have your child practice at home by counting groups of pennies by 2's, 5's, and 10's.  
We are still working on our "Friend" descriptive writing; it should be finished next week.
We took a break from the reading series but we did read some Laura Numeroff and we started a chapter book, Second Grade Friends.

Next week a volunteer from Junior Achievement will come in to teach us about our community and economics.  We will also have a fire safety demo by our local firepersons.

Celebrate You!

The "Celebrate Me!" projects were very creative and interesting.  It was fun learning more about each child.  During presentations we focused on speaking clearly and using good eye contact with the audience.  Everyone listened so respectfully as classmates spent a few minutes reading their passages and explaining their projects.  They are now displayed in the hallway for all to enjoy.  If you left click on these photos you can see them in more detail.

We made fractured pumpkins at one of our centers this week.  After cutting the pumpkin it had to be put back together like a puzzle and decorated.  Each pumpkin ended up having its own unique personality!  It was a great project to work on creativity, spatial relationships, and fine motor skills.
Other centers included working on math facts and ten facts, a listening center where students listened to How Do Dinosaurs Get to School? and drew their favorite part, making a glyph about being sick, and Word Work with blends and vowel sounds.
Throughout the week we have worked on writing.  We started with an organizational web and 1st draft and next week we'll do revising and editing.  With this writing assignment we are paying particular attention to the topic sentence and concluding statement.  In math we struggled a bit with 2-step word problems and missing addends.  I know these are difficult concepts for some to grasp but we will keep revisiting them until we master them.  Look how well we've done with fact families!
In Science we are finishing up our Healthy 
Choices unit.  The study guide will come home Tuesday and the test will be on Wednesday.  I think the students are well prepared


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We've started learning about our October Author of the Month, Laura Numeroff.  She likes writing circular stories.  Ask your child what a circular story is.

Enjoy your three day weekend!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

During our Monday Morning Message I looked out to see a sea of blue.  The children dressed in blue to support the fight against bullying.

Everyone colored a balanced meal on a paper plate as part of our Healthy Choices unit.  Ask your child to name the food groups found on your dinner plates tonight!  If you left click on a photo you can make it bigger to see more detail.

We finished our first big writing assignment, a personal narrative about the first day of school.  We worked on writing a story with a good beginning, middle, and end.  What details some of the stories had!

Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed!

     In honor of John Chapman's birthday we made applesauce with an apple peeler/corer/slicer.  Each student got to peel an apple then we cooked them all day in the crock pot with cinnamon and a little sugar.  Almost everyone loved it!
     Keep working on those doubles facts- we will have a test on them tomorrow.  Spending 10-15 minutes a night learning math facts will really pay off in the coming years.  
     

The students worked together to create their poster, The Golden Rule Kids.  We have all agreed to follow the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated.

It was wonderful seeing all of the parents at Open House last night.  I hope I gave you all of the information you wanted (maybe TOO much!) but if you have questions please don't hesitate to communicate with me.  The children were so excited to read your notes.  Those of you who could not make it, don't worry, I wrote notes for those students so they wouldn't feel left out.

We had a busy week getting in to our reading series.  As a class we did very well on our first test.  Keep studying those spelling words, vocab, and grammar sheets each week.  We have also worked on writing a personal narrative, learning doubles facts and we have started working on our play, "The Pyramid Cafe".  It's about the 5 food groups and the "Other" group (fats, oils, and sweets).

Centers this Friday included a food pyramid, "Stare" ( a memory game), a math facts game, the listening center, a Weekly Reader about manners, and a phonics center.  Fun Friday!!

Fun Friday!

This was a fun and busy week!  We enjoyed a visit from our 5th grade reading buddies on Thursday.  There is nothing like watching a whole classroom of students reading together with total concentration.  Some of the buddies went down to Miss Barmasse's room and I took photos of the ones that stayed with me (see below).  Next month we will switch it up.

We've spent a lot of time this week getting comfortable with our new Daily Five program.  I wrote about it in our September newsletter.  Ask your child how we are building up our stamina!

.Most Fridays we enjoy working on group centers.  Today we started making a scarecrow, listened to a book on tape, put together puzzles of the United States, practiced spelling with Boggle, and practiced our math facts that have a sum of 10 using the mathlines website (see our links list).  

We are also spending time learning to be a team.  The students decided to call our class The Golden Rule Kids and we are working on treating each other with kindness and respect.  Please continue to talk to your child about treating others as they want to be treated. and ask them if they have done any acts of kindness this week.  Enjoy the weekend together!