Happy Friday Families!! I hope you all have a wonderful, long weekend with Memorial Day on Monday! As a reminder, no school on Monday!
This week has been so much fun! We have been tracking the moon phases with Oreos, playing jeopardy in math, and continuing our series in writing! I cannot believe it is almost June! Where did the year go!?! I am so proud of all the work our class has done this year! We’re in the home stretch to summer! Writing: Our book series have taken off this week with many new adventures, characters, and troublemakers! It is so fun to watch students get absorbed into their characters and stories. In our mini lessons this week students have focused on adding patterns in their stories to add detail, using their magical writing powers to strengthen their story, and showing our readers what is happening with tiny, realistic details. Next week we are going to wrap up our series and put them into our own book boxes! Thank you to everyone who brought in a cereal box! Reading: During reading this week, our class revisited how to be expert non-fiction readers by using many different strategies. One strategy students used was stopping on a page and studying everything on it. Many students realized that they skipped over interesting facts or cool pictures because they were focusing on finishing the book rather than reading to learn all the fun information. Everyone slowed down and really studied each page of their non-fiction books. Students have also started writing about the books they are reading. In some reading responses students write about a new fact they learned, something they are wondering about, or something they made a connection with in the book. It is so much fun to watch students’ eyes get big when they read something interesting! Math: This week in math, we played a jeopardy game to show what we have learned! The class was divided into 4 teams and each team had to work together to solve different math problems. Each math problem covered a specific skill or strategy that we have learned over the year. During the game, each group worked together to solve every problem that came up and everyone had a positive attitude. After the game, we continued building our understanding of double-digit addition by breaking apart the numbers into tens and one’s first and then adding. Science: To begin our new unit, our class composed a KWL chart about the moon, sun, and stars. As a class, we discussed things we already knew about these three things and what we wondered about them. As we progress through the unit, we will update our chart with things we have learned! This week we have been studying the moon and charting the different phases it has gone through. Together we learned why the moon has different phases, what the moons looks like, and we have used Oreo cookies to show the different phases. This unit has been so much fun already and we have just started! Many students are excited to start learning about the sun and stars! Next week we will continue charting the moon phases and start exploring the sun and stars. Next week I will have a substitute on Tuesday and Wednesday. If you have any change in how your child is going home those days, please email the Maple Hills Attendance so they can let my sub know. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Happy Friday Families! Another week closer to summer although our beautiful weather has seemed to disappear for a little while! Tomorrow night is Maple Hills Mariners Night! I hope to see you there!
We still need a couple more cereal boxes for our series books so please send some in if you have any! Writing: This week in writing we celebrated our first series with the class! Each student celebrated and described their characters just like an author would! Students then paired up with their writing partner to have a revision party. With their writing partner, students looked for spelling errors, missing punctuation, and checked to see if their details were like an author’s details. After our revision party, students prepared to say goodbye to their first series by turning in one of their adventures and sharing it with the class. It was so much fun listening to all the amazing stories written by our classmates! Reading: In reading this week we used our understanding of finding facts in our books to help write book responses! Together we looked at the index of a non-fiction book and noticed how the index contains key words and page numbers to learn more about a specific topic. To ease into book responses, each student wrote two new things or facts they learned from reading their non-fiction book and what questions or wonderings they have about their book topic. The following day, students continued reading their non-fiction book to see if their wondering was answered. Students then wrote the answer to their wondering as their book response. To end the week, students paired up to write a book response about a new non-fiction book from the library! Math: During math this week, we spent a lot of time reviewing skills and strategies that we have learned over the year! We continued to solve part unknown and whole unknown story problems using many different strategies such as 5 group drawings, number bonds, tape diagrams, and many more. It is so amazing to see students’ confidence grow as they solve new problems. Together we also learned about double tape diagrams and how to use them when solving more than and fewer than story problems. Many students thought these were easy since they had already used tape diagrams before. Social Studies: We finished our Needs and Wants unit by learning what would happen if our needs were not met and what we do when our wants are no longer a want. Many students realized that without our needs being met, people and animals would not survive. We read the book The Kapok Tree and saw how animals also have needs and how they would not survive without them. To finish the week, we talked about what we do with our wants that are no longer a want such as toys, clothes, the rest of our lunches, etc. Many students were sad to realize that these wants end up in the garbage when they could be recycled, donated, or turned into something new. Each student promised to think about other ways to get rid of things they no longer want other than throwing them away! Thank you for all of your support this year! Have a great weekend and I hope to see you at the game! Go Mariners! Happy Friday families! It looks like we will have a nice, sunny weekend! Our class has had so much fun this week with Science to Go, our Kona Ice party, and many fun crafts!
I want to send a BIG thank you to all of you for spoiling me this week during Teacher Appreciation Week! I have truly enjoyed teaching this class and have developed such great relationships with each student in our class. I am going to miss each and every one of these students when they go to second grade! Writing: In our writing this week, we talked about creating our own series and sticking with our characters. Many students have brave characters going on different adventures in space, the forest, and even the deep ocean! Each student focused on their characters, what kind of trouble they get into, and how they get out of trouble. Before they started writing their series, students planned their ideas across their pages so they knew what parts of their story they were going to write on each page. I am excited to see where these characters go and the kind of trouble they get into! Reading: This week we took a look at different books about teeth! The first book we read was about different traditions around the world when people lose their baby teeth. Before reading, each student shared with a partner what they wondered about tooth traditions and what their traditions are. After sharing our wonderings, we read many different traditions such as throwing their tooth on the roof, burying the tooth, or waiting for a mouse to come take their tooth away! Next we compared these facts to another book about animal teeth. We noticed that animals don’t have traditions when they lose their teeth but that some animals have teeth that never stop growing or animals that have 20 rows of teeth! Math: We finished Module 5 this week and our class can now tell the time on an analogue clock when it is at the top of an hour or half past the hour. During our lessons this week, our class learned about the different parts of a clock and how the hour and minute hands move around the clock. Each student did a great job of noticing that when the time shows half past an hour, the hour hand is pointing between two numbers. Using this clue, many students were able to easily read times reading at the half hour. Social studies: As we continued learning about needs and wants this week, we examined clothing and possessions needs and wants. When we discussed clothing needs and wants, our class learned that clothing needs vary based off where people live. For example, people living in the desert do not need a winter jacket like someone living in the arctic. We then discussed what our clothing needs are in the PNW and many students noticed that we need rain jackets to keep us dry from the rain! After looking at clothing needs and wants, we then talked about possession needs and wants and how they can also change depending where you live. Our class had so much fun enjoying our Kona Ice Reward party! Thank you to everyone who donated to our school and helped us provided better education for our students. I hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s Day! Enjoy your weekend! Happy Friday Families! We have had such an exciting week! Congratulations to all of those who helped our class get to First Place in our Orange Ruler Fundraiser! We are all so excited to help our school and, of course, for the Kona Ice Party next Friday! Thank you so much to everyone who donated to our school!!
Writing: This week we started writing our very first Realistic Fiction stories. Each student created their own character, imagined where the story was happening, and imagined the trouble our characters would get in. After thinking about all the things we could, we started to plan our stories across our pages by making quick sketches to help us remember. By the end of the week, some students had finished explained who their character is, where there character is, and what trouble their character gets into. It is so fun to read these realistic fiction stories! As our class begins writing their own series, please bring in cereal boxes that we can make into our own series boxes! We have 6 so far and need 10 more so each student can have a box! Thank you to those who have brought in a box already! Reading: Our class went back to Non-Fiction books and remembered all the skills and strategies about how to read non-fiction books. We talked about reading the table of contents, getting a sneak peak, and reading the back of the book for information. After going over all that we knew, we focused on learning new things in the books: facts! Together we looked at different non-fiction books and the new information we learned from them! We then wrote down some facts that we learned in a reading response! Math: In math this week we started to learn about fractions in shapes! Using a pizza model, we talked about equal parts and agreed that everyone should get an equal piece of pizza otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair. We partitioned our pizza (circle) into halves and fourths/quarters. Our class then divided a rectangle into halves and fourths/quarters. By the end of the week, everyone was able to see that one half is bigger than one fourth/one quarter. Next week we will start learning about time and clocks! Social Studies: Continuing with our unit of Needs and Wants, our class traveled the world to see the different foods that people eat. We travelled across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas to see the different plates of food that people eat! Many students noticed that most of the plates had the foods that people need to survive such as fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, and dairy. We then talked about foods that we like to eat and created our own plates to show tasty foods our bodies need! Science To Go: This week Science To Go visited our school and brought their habitat displays! Our class had such fun time exploring rain forest, ocean, desert, wetland, and arctic habitats. Each student looked for needs in each habitat such as food, water, and shelter. It was such a fun way to tie in our social study unit to science! Next week we have our Kona Ice Party and popcorn Friday! It is also Staff Appreciation week! Don’t forget to bring in some box tops for our class! I hope you all have a great weekend! |