A Fabulous Fourth Week!

OUR CLASS ON PICTURE DAY!

Our fourth week has been a fabulous one. We are very busy during our Integrated Language Arts time.



Our Word Wall Work



Scrambled Sentences

Miss Fate has been working on building our word wall and reading with the students. The students have been working with the words I, be, me, we, he and she. Their writing is improving tremendously.  Miss Heifner continues to work on rhyming words with the students. She also introduced scrambled sentences. The students were given sentences that had been cut up. They had to look for the uppercase letter to indicate the start of the sentence, the ending mark to indicate the end of the sentence, and then they were on their own to figure out what goes in between! They loved this activity and had a lot of fun.  Eventually they will be able to do this activity in an independent center all on their own. 

READING!



Our Emotion Books!



Mrs. Waller read THE IMPORTANT BOOK by Margaret Wise Brown this week, then the students came up with there own Important List, which included three very important things about themselves. We have also started an emotions booklet after reading MY MANY COLORED DAYS by Dr. Seuss in Social Studies on Monday.

As a class, we discussed our emotions and how important it is to be able to express our emotions in an appropriate way.  Our booklets are not finished, but will be soon.  Mrs. Waller also introduced the Venn Diagram and the students learned to compare and contrast two different items. The students had fun using two hula hoops to learn about this concept.  Being able to compare and contrast items is a higher order thinking skill and really gets their wheels turning. We had fun as we compared students and teachers, grandparents and grandchildren (that was a funny one; we discussed wrinkles, dentures and reading glasses!)...circles and triangles, shirts and pants, to name just a few.

Our Venn Diagram

In Social Studies, we continue to learn about ourselves, others and a caring community.  As stated above, we have been learning about our emotions. The students have also been introduced to the multiple intelligences and we have discussed how we all learn differently. It is important for the students to know  that we all learn differently and they need to start discovering how it is that they learn best. Thursday, Miss Fate defined the word rule and the children brainstormed several reasons why we have rules and how they can help.  The children were then divided into small groups as they acted our seven different scenarios in which rules were absent (ie: the students in this classroom do not have to raise their hand before talking, or there are no rules that let the students know how to line up for and get ready for lunch, etc.). We have many actors on our hands, we had a great time with this activity. We continue to enjoy our How I Got My Name presentations as well. We are having a great time as we learn more and more about your children.

Miss Heifner cuts in line!

Kathryn continues to be poked by a fellow classmate...



Oh no! There are NO RULES on the playground....



Sloane teaches the class!



Skip counting by 2!

 We continue to move onward with our math concepts. We are reviewing odds/evens and switcheroos (ex: 4+5=9, 5+4=9). They have manipulated pipe cleaners and beads to get a good look at why we can switcheroo addition equations.  We discussed the terms addend and sum, so the children know what makes up a number sentence.  They demonstrated great self control while they were working with their pipe cleaners! Thank you Mary Wetzel for helping to put those pipe cleaners together.  Our review of skip counting continues. We have introduced the hundred chart and have been looking at the pattern on the hundred chart when we color it in by 2's, 5's, 10's.  They have also placed game markers on the chart as well to look at these patterns. 



We are serious about the LOTTO!

 In TNT on Wednesday we began our discussion about community helpers and we brainstormed a list of  various community helpers. We came up with over 30! Then to follow up we played Community Helper LOTTO (BINGO) The students had to listen carefully as the LOTTO caller described the community helper, they then placed their game piece on the appropriate person. The winner yelled out LOTTO! We had a great time.




Ask your children about  Tonight on the Titanic. It is a book in the Magic Tree House series. We started it last week and just finished it Wednesday. They were entranced as Jack and Annie solved the mystery.


In Hands-On Science this week, we introduced the students to the definition of an attribute and how we can sort objects according to those attributes. The children were divided into groups of five and given a bag with an attribute. We then went outside and the groups secretly searched for items with their given attribute. Inside, the students displayed their items and we voted by secret ballot on the items and what attribute they possessed! We had a great time and were able to enjoy the great outdoors! Check out the pictures below:

Lucas voting on BAG #3!



BAG #2



Claire and Luke casting their votes.....what will they decide?

Miss Fate also lead us in Chapel this week as we learned about David and Goliath. She had several helpers and the kids had a good time. Mrs. Frizzle (Miss Heifner) from the Magic School Bus also joined us in Chapel on Wednesday as we handed out  certificates for the summer reading program.

In computer lab this week the students worked to reinforce their learning at www.primarygames.com!


REMINDERS:

Wednesday, September 21st, @12:30-1:30pm-- TNT--Firefighters are visiting!

Monday, September 26th, Family Collage due

Friday, September 30th NOON Dismissal/Spirit Day

Friday, September 30th Celebration of Names (Kid only event)