Next week we will introduce topic 3 five and ten relationships. It will start out with recognizing numbers on a ten frame. This is a visual tool to help the students better recognize numbers and add parts. This is a short topic, that again will help us visual how to make numbers up to ten. This topic will help preface the next topic Addition and Subtraction facts to 12. We've been using cubes and our name tag number lines to help us add and subtract thus far, this will be another tool to add to our box.
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Everyone likes to write about themselves, especially kids! So this week we are going to read some great books that will help guide us in writing about ourselves! Personal narratives are an important part of learning how to be a writer. Many stories come from experiences authors have had in their own lives! We are going to learn to capture small moments and turn those into stories. The picture books: Do Like Kayla, I Love My Hair, Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, ___ and ____ show a small moment captured and how they told their story. We will review again, the different parts of a story (beginning, middle and end) encouraging them to write stories with more than one page. These are standards we will revisit throughout the year. The goal is to set them up with a foundation to build on as the writing workshop progresses. We will add many more tools to our tool box! When spending time with your children over the next few weeks, ask what they did that day? Maybe something small will catch their memory and turn into a story i.e., dropped my sandwich on the floor, was the secret student, rode my bike home from school etc!! Kids have a lot to share, so simply asking or listening will help them tell their stories! It's time to add new strategies! On our reading wall we will add: "Does it look right?" and "Does it make sense?". By asking does it make sense, that will give us, the readers, a cue to check if what we read matches the pictures we see. By asking does it look right, the reader (us) will learn to look from left to right to check our prediction (what we think the word is or what we read) and see if it looks right based on the letter-sound relationship we see. These strategies will piggy back on our old strategies to look at the pictures and get our mouth ready. After spending time reading to self next week, they will share what strategies they used during that time. I will have a few write their names on post it notes and place on the specific strategy they used. By the mid-week/end of the week, each child will place their name under a strategy. Sharing out about this is a helpful way to get them to think about what they are doing as readers and share with their peers what they are doing! They love to share so I think this is a great way to start small with our conversations about reading! I will be reading different Frog and Toad stories this week! At home, since this is our first week with our logs, it may be helpful to use to suggest these strategies or ask your child what strategy they used during their reading. And just to remind you :) The logs start on Monday (9/30) and I will check them and replace books the NEXT Monday. This will give you enough time to record weekend reading and nightly reading. In their bags are the expectations for reading at home. The books that get sent home may get repetitive (please remember they are in their for a reason) but do feel free to read other books from the library or home or whatever! So this Monday, 9/30 I will send books home at your child's reading level and their interest (they will get to pick most of them). Please record their reading throughout the week and if you get a chance the weekend. Thanks so much! After taking data and doing a lot of observing during our apple investigation, they are ready to try an investigation independently (well, with their team tables :) ). Each table voted on which fruit they would like to observe for the fruit drying experiment. After much modeling and discussion, they understand that their expectation is to have accurate data, drawings and conclusions (their teams answers should match). They are very excited to use the balance/scales to weigh their fruit and record data! Throughout the week our discussions led us to talk about why the apple without skin was losing weight, as well as the chopped apples. They came up with some really great insight. We used the vocabulary word evaporation and discussed it's meaning. They did a great job being scientists and understanding that observing is a huge part of learning! In reading, we will continue to add minutes to graph: Read to Self, Read to Someone and Listening to Reading. I have already begun to pull small groups and individuals to work on reading and I will continue to do this as well during that time. During reading workshop I will also be starting to talk about reading strategies. We will start with some review from K: Look at the pictures and getting your mouth ready (for the beginning sound/blend). We will practice with some leveled books as a whole group and in small groups as needed. Even students that are reading higher level texts can still use these strategies to help them read. Many of them like to read picture books and most of them have words that sometimes are hard to read and pictures may help in decoding the unknown word. We will be working on those two strategies for most of next week. These are key words that you can use at home when you are reading with your child (look at the pictures and get your mouth ready), as these will be posted on the wall and they are sayings they will hear frequently from me! In writing workshop, we will talk about the different parts of a story, very basic: beginning, middle and end. This will help them remember to write stories that have all of these components to make their reader happy! Each day we will talk and chart about what makes each part (beginning, middle and end) and read some great books to help us realize that we can be writer's/authors too! Just giving them a basic outline of what stories contain will encourage them to write "stories" and not a page. This may take some time to sink in :) So no worries, we will get there! I will also start working with small groups next week for writing, along with some one on one based on your child's needs. Some books we will read: Chester Chester's Back Chester's Masterpiece Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle The Things I Can Do Ike's Incredible Ink Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day ! I'm Special. I'm Me. Clara and Asha Last week we discussed how scientist use various tools and their senses to both make observations, predictions and conduct experiments (ask questions). This week the students will be making their own observations and recording data as we observe three apples in our apple drying experiment. Last week we made predictions about which apple we thought would dry the fastest: whole apple with skin, whole apple without skin or a chopped up apple. We will measure each apple each day with a scale and cubes. We are going to use this time to practice making accurate measurements and making accurate drawings of the apples. I will be doing a lot of modeling during this experiment so they understand the expectations of an experiment like this. We will conclude on Friday, answering questions about which apple dried the fastest and why we think this. We will also interpret what we think would happen if we did this with oranges. Next week each table will pick a fruit and do the same experiment (more independently). They will vote this Friday on what fruit their table will do! We will do one more whole group word study rotation to practice the routines, rules and different types of activities. We will work on ug, ut and un. Short "u" is a tricky sound and will help some students who are working on short vowels, as well as being great review for other students. They love the activities and it's great fun to come up with the word list with them! They are pretty hilarious (last weeks swag) and creative! The words will go home on Monday with their word study list. We will do various word activities (sorts, picture sorts, working with words, word races etc). After this round, I will be putting together groups based on their developmental spelling inventory data. Your child will be working in a small group on word patterns that are appropriate for them. I will color code so you will start seeing various colors of work go home. That's to make both MY :) and their lives a little easier to organize! This week: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we will continue our work with subtraction. I taught them how to use pictures AND cubes to help us with our subtraction problems. Using two different methods, gives them a chance to double check their work. Sometimes we draw too many or too little circles and if we have cubes to help us double check that will just help! Story problems come into play this week, as well as comparing. This tends to be tricky because it sounds like it's an adding problem. We will work on tons of story problems this week (stories about taking away, stories about missing parts, stories about comparing etc.). For example, Ted had nine apples, Sarah had five. How many more apples does Ted have than Sara? We will do a lot of work with this, using pictures, cubes and talking about the language of the story problems. We will also talk about the addition connection, some have already got it! Nonfiction is a great way to get us talking about making observations and using tools to help us learn about animals, plants and other things. Studying owls and Great White sharks has been a great way to jump start this thinking. We are going to go on a fall walk on Monday using all our senses to draw and write about what we smell, hear, taste (metaphorically) and hear. Next week we are going to make predictions about an apple drying experiment we are doing next week. We will talk about how predictions help guide scientist thinking. Wednesday we will have our second round of guidance and just for fun, we will spend our content time next Thursday celebrating Pirate day with some crafts, poems and songs!! Arrrghhh!! :) This past week we talked about the parts of 6, 7 and 8. Next week we will continue with 9. After practice with parts and wholes, we will move onto writing subtraction sentences and story problems with subtraction and comparing. Subtraction tends to be more difficult than addition so any extra practice at home would be awesome! We use cubes in class to show our whole, then take part away (hide it behind our back) and show what part is left. You could do this at home as well, but make sure you give them their own cubes/beans/noodles whatever to manipulate to show what part is missing. I use the terms: whole-part= apart. We will continue this next week and into the following. I am highly encouraging the use of their cubes or name tag that has a number line rather than their fingers ;) |
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