Poetry, Weather, and More...
Everyone seemed thrilled to be back together after the break. We shared many stories of family trips, traditions, and several new pets. We are very close to wrapping up our poetry unit. The kids have selected their favorite poems to publish in a poetry book and are putting the finishing touches on those this week. We have jumped into our weather unit and each child had created their own weather journal to observe and record the weather each day at school. We have been examining sky conditions, temperature, wind and precipitation. At the end of the week, each table created a rain gauge to measure the daily precipitation in our garden area.
As readers we have been taking a closer look at the questions we ask ourselves while reading. While tracking the specific questions the kids were thinking during our read aloud, The Wizard of Oz, they began to realize the questions were guiding them toward what might happen next. as we continue this study, we will begin to focus on the process of making predictions and how this builds into comprehension.
In math last week, we worked with larger numbers, building them with manipulatives and writing them in various forms. We used beans and blocks to create these numbers, grouping them as ones, tens and hundreds. Then we had the opportunity to examine how these groups change when we add to the number. Through these explorations we are gaining an understanding of multi-digit addition.
This Coming Week
We will continue our unit on weather and begin to work on group expert projects on extreme weather events. In writing, we will publish our poetry books. We will look more closely at making reasonable predictions as readers. As we explore building larger numbers in a variety of ways, we will work on multi-digit addition and subtraction.
Important Dates
January 14 Class Pictures
January 17 Our Gathering at 2:20
January 18 11:30 Dismissal
January 21 MLK Holiday
January 24 Information Night for Prospective Parents
January 29 Visitation for Prospective Parents
Amazing, on the day your class is learning about concrete poems, you realize your shirt graphic is one large concrete poem! Perfect timing.
What better way to learn how to transform your 6 Room Poem notes into a finished piece of poetry than from a fellow poet sharing her strategies.
Our guest reader shared this wonderful book which complements our current efforts with Wanna Buddy perfectly.
One of our science shares this week was a small dead snake. The student's question: can you tell what might have killed this snake and how do you know? This question pushed them to examine the evidence carefully and process the information they knew about animal relationships.
Observing and recording the weather:
Thanks for all of the thoughtful donations. Keep them coming!
Friday we voted on name choices for our new hamster. The winner is...Shadow! Enjoy a little video of Shadow below. He will be joining us in the classroom this week. Notice, the minute the door opens, he is ready to escape! He won't be visiting homes for another week or so.
