Pajama Day

Pajama Day was a lot of fun.  We worked hard on being respectful and following classroom rules in order to earn this special day.  We walked in very quiet lines, played nicely at recess, helped clean up our classroom, listened the first time, helped a friend. . .  Whenever we did something like this we earned a piece on Mr. Potatohead.  When Mr. Potatohead had all his parts, we earned our Pajama Day!

Science - Sense of Sight

In Science this week we began our unit on the senses.  We talked about our sense of sight.  We explored color mixing with food coloring and water as well as playdoh.  We also looked at kaleidoscopes and different lenses.

Spookley the Square Pumpkin

We read The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano.  We talked about the characters and the setting.  Then we discussed the problem and the solution.  Story mapping is a skill that we will be working on all year as we develop important comprehension skills.  

The children worked together to create posters showing the different parts of the story.

It took a lot of cooperation and discussion to make our posters.  Each group shared their poster when we were done.

If you would like to see a video of the story about Spookley, click on this link.

Spookley the Square Pumpkin

Happy Halloween!

Writers' Workshop

During Writers' Workshop we write in journals once a week.  We also read a story once a week that focuses on a particular trait used by good writers.  Right now we are focusing on the trait of ideas.  
We read All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachan.  In addition to coming up with interesting ideas to write about, the children are also working on listening for the first sound in each word and leaving spaces in between words.

Here are some of the places we love . . .

I love my bedroom.

I love Disneyworld.

I like my playground.                    

I love Hood's Pond.

Common Core Connections -
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

1. Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I.
2. Recognize and name end punctuation.
3. Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes).
4. Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships

Johnny the K

We had fun singing with Johnny the K!

Curriculum Update

Language Arts

·      Writers’ Workshop – Journal entries each week are about something true – a memory, a place, an activity, an object, a favorite anything.  We discuss the different ideas authors choose to write about as we read books in our classroom.

·      Guided Reading – The sight words, “I”, “a”, “the”, “it”, and “is” have been introduced.  Thank you for sending back the word rings by Wednesday so we have them ready for our Guided Reading time on Thursday.  The children have four of the paper copy books in their “Good Fit” book bags which they practice reading during our Daily Five Reading time.  Now that we have enough books to work with and more are regularly introduced, I will be asking the children to pick one book each week that they feel they have practiced enough and would like to bring home.  This book can be kept in a collection of books at home for their continued practice.

·      The children are very excited about reading in our classroom.  I have been implementing components from The Daily Five by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser into our classroom routine.  The Daily Five provides a structure for teaching reading which fosters literacy independence in the early grades.   We first talked about how to select a “good fit” book.  The children each have a special bag in which to keep these books.  A “good fit” book is one chosen by the child because of interest or a specific purpose.  The child should be able to comprehend what is happening in the book even if they are primarily “reading” the pictures or retelling a story which they have heard before.  At least three of the books in their bags must be books in which the child can read most of the words so they can practice fluency.  After working on book selection, we moved on to establishing a routine for “Read to Self” time.  During this time, the children take their book bags to a spot by themselves, they get started reading right away, they read quietly the whole time, and they stay in their spot.  We discussed the importance of building up stamina and being able to read independently for longer periods of time.  During this time, the children know that my job is to read with children.  Because the rest of the class is working quietly and independently, I will be free to work with small reading groups and individual children.  The next aspect of the program is called “Read to Someone”.  There are specific goals beyond what we have previously done with partner reading.  I will be introducing “Read to Someone” in the near future and will share more details later.  I am very proud of how well the children are doing with “Read to Self” time.

·       Fundations – We have been working on the letters Tt, Bb, Ff, Mm, Nn, Ii, and Uu.  Each day the children work on identifying these letters and sounds and on forming the letters through a variety of different activities.  We have been learning how to identify how many words there are in a sentence, how to begin and end a sentence, and how to change a word(s) in a sentence.

Math

·      We have been working on reading and writing the numerals 1 – 9, using 1-1 correspondence to build and count out the correct number of objects to match the numerals.

·      We worked on pairing sets of objects with other sets of the same quantity.

·      Calendar Math provides us with rich mathematical discussions.  We are learning to recognize numeral dot patterns on dominoes 0 – 9.   We add to a collection of objects in the Daily Depositor each day which helps us learn about place value and develop an understanding of ones and tens.  Graphing has also been introduced.  We continue to practice days of the week, date on the calendar, and numberline activities.

·      We practice the correct formation of numerals.

Science and Health

· We have discussed what a scientist does and have worked on developing our observation skills.  We learned how to use a magnifying glass and recorded what we observed.  We will be starting our unit on the Senses.

· We have been discussing safety rules, specifically, the importance of knowing name, address, and phone number, going places with a buddy, and checking first before going places or making changes in our plans. Class meetings will now focus on developing an understanding of the 4 rules in our Olweus bullying prevention program.

Literacy Centers

·      We have done fall activities, including school buses, apples, and leaves.

·      Future literacy center work will include activities about the community of Topsfield and community helpers.  We will also be doing activities for Halloween.

Homework

While homework will be sent home weekly throughout the year, it is not necessary for it to be returned to school the very next day.  We do like children to get into the habit and routine of doing homework and returning it to school.  However, we understand that it may not always be possible to complete homework the night it is received.

Looking Ahead

Our Halloween parade and party will be on the afternoon of Thursday, October 30th.  On this day, please send in your child’s costume in a bag with his or her name on it.  No weapons of any sort are permitted with your child’s costume.  The Halloween parade will begin at 2:00 in the front of the school.  Following the parade, we will return to the classroom for our party.  Room mothers may be contacting you regarding items needed.

         

Apples

We had fun with apple activities!  I asked the children which type of apple they liked best.  We enjoyed tasting different types of apples, graphing our results, and making a class book.  We discussed our findings.  Ask your child which type of apple was the class favorite.

Making apple puppets gave us practice with coloring and cutting. 

The puppets were fun to play with when we were done!

We loved reading our apple poem.  

Guess what part of the poem is being read in this picture!

Parent Open House

  I wanted you to have a copy of this video.  Your children loved watching themselves!  We are off to a wonderful start, and I look forward to working with your children this year.