Students have built up their independent reading stamina and are now reading without interruption for at least 20 minutes. I have been able to do some quick assessments with students to get to know more about them as readers. We have begun a new chapter book for a class read aloud. It is called The Lemonade War. During shared reading, we enjoyed a current events article about the 'new' Winnipeg Jets team.
In writing, we have spent quite a few lessons talking about IDEAS. Students have created 'heart maps' which depict people, places or things that are near and dear to their heart. They were asked to choose one item from their heart map to write about. Several students may also have brought home a 'writing bingo' sheet to complete. This activity had students completing sentence starters with memories or experiences of themselves (or someone they know). Please have your child return it by Tuesday. We will use this list (along with others to come) to select ideas for writing. Finally, this week we will be having our second Free Write Friday session. This block is set aside for students to have complete choice on topic and genre as well as whether to collaborate or work alone, and where to work in the classroom. As long as they are writing. I have found this to be a wonderful way to get 'reluctant writers' to participate in writing.
We have continued with a daily block of Math. Currently we are working on mental math strategies which will allow students to build fluency with adding and subtracting numbers. So far we have learned to add 2 to an even or an odd number. Students enjoy being given a 'math genius' level challenge question. Here's an example:
3, 456, 168, 742, 891 + 2 =
If you have a chance, check out the page inserts at the beginning of the planners which explain Restitution. Our school has committed to using this language and framework in our interactions with one another. We also learned about the 5 basic needs of all people: survival, love, freedom, fun and power. Right now we are having amazing discussions about what each of these mean.
Things to note:
- Terry Fox run: it happens rain or shine! We run with the intermediates at 2pm
- Working with words: we are working on learning our number words! You can practice these at home if you wish. Notice the patterns (_teen, _ty).
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- thirty
- forty
- fifty
- sixty
- seventy
- eighty
- ninety
- one hundred
- one thousand
No comments:
Post a Comment