Dear Parents:
Can you believe we have been in school for 100 days? The days are flying by! On Friday, we celebrated the 100th day of school. After reading the books, The 100th Day of School and What is a Hundred?, the children participated in various activities, much like the children in one of the books. We counted up to 100 and back, made an inch cube snake 100 inches long, solved math facts for 100 seconds to see how many we could do, worked at finding 100 words we could read and write, hopped 100 times without holding on to anything, flipped a coin 100 times to see if it would land on heads or tails more often, keeping track with tallies, and ate our 100th day snack mix. Mmmmm! We also read 100 books as a class and kept track with tallies on the board. I've posted pictures on our shutterfly site so click the link and enjoy the great day we had!
Since Thursday was Groundhog Day, we had fun learning all about the groundhog. We then completed a web together of all that we had learned about them and the children used the information from that graphic organizer to write their own nonfiction books about the groundhog. They did a fantastic job! I hope you read the book your child wrote and celebrated his/her great writing! Miss Hawley brought in her guinea pig to visit - a cousin of the groundhog!
Reading Week will be the week of February 21 - 24. Monday, the 20th, is a school holiday for President's Day. We begin the week on Tuesday with Character Day! The children are to choose a character from a favorite book to come to school dressed as that day. They need to bring the book with them and be prepared to present orally to our class about the book and character. We will parade in costume with our books at Town Meeting that morning. We will be having an all lower school read in the courtyard that week as well. Friday of that week is the Oldie Goldie Book Sale. You may begin bringing in your donations of books this week! Boxes will be in the hallway.
With conference day on Thursday this week, our school week is shortened, but still packed full of learning. A look at what is happening in 1-4 this week:
The children have earned another compliment party! A big thank you to Jill Emerson for hosting it! We will celebrate Tuesday afternoon.
Language Arts: Our spelling strategy is again on the long vowel/silent e. This week's words will focus on the long /i/ sound with the silent e as in "line". We will be reviewing the digraphs qu /kw/ and wh /hw/. We'll talk more about the comprehension strategy of figuring out the problem/solution in a story. In grammar, we'll work on dropping the e at the end of words before adding the inflections -ed and -ing. We'll also work on using describing words to tell about "feelings".
Reading Workshop: We have begun using our Reading Response notebooks (the yellow spiral that came home last week). We will talk more about this at our conference. We are doing a mini unit on nonfiction reading strategies to help us with our research projects in science. We're noticing the features in nonfiction texts and how they help us find and learn information about a topic. We're also learning that as readers we... warm up our minds before reading by thinking "what do I already know about this topic" and "what do I want to learn"; accumulate information by reading different books on a topic; and keep track of new information by jotting what we learn on sticky notes.
Writing Workshop: Our writing celebration last Monday was a HUGE success! Thank you for coming to celebrate with our writers and for the wonderful compliments you wrote to them. They were on cloud 9! We have begun our new unit on revision and they are now revising those same stories! That's what writers do - they work to improve and make their writing even better! I am introducing tools a writer can use to insert new text into the midst of a draft and we will practice using these tools as the study continues.
Math: We will be exploring patterns in sums of two dice, introducing the Addition/Subtraction Facts Table, and using name-collection boxes to help us come up with equivalent names for numbers.
Science: The children are having a blast working on their planet projects! We talked about and brainstormed the project requirements together. They are working with their partners to complete their research, decide the points they want to teach about their planet, how they want to present their project, what materials they need to complete it, and will have time to work on the visual presentation in class. Some have already brought in materials and begun to work on it! The excitement is contagious! They will continue this work for the next few weeks and will practice their oral presentation together. They will be presenting their projects and teaching fourth graders during our science week the end of this month.
Volunteers this week:
- Tuesday - Art - Natalie Ames - 12:05
- Wednesday - Math Game - Kelli Cross - 1:15
- Friday - Parent Reader - Susannah Malison - 2:15
Conference Day is Thursday! No school for students!
Valentine's Party is Tuesday, 2/14, at 1:45 p.m. - All parents are welcome to join us!
Relay for Life Hot Dog Lunch - Wednesday 2/15
Professional Development Day, Friday 2/17 - No school for students!
President's Day - Monday, 2/20 - No school for students or faculty!
Reading Week - Tuesday, 2/21 - Friday, 2/24
Oldie Goldie Book Sale - Friday, 2/24 - Start collecting your books now to donate! The boxes will be in our hallway this week!
Field Trip to Science Center Planetarium - Wednesday, 2/29
Until next time!
Susan
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