Week 5 and 6

Wow, I can't believe how fast time is moving already!  We are already in a month and a half, and we have done so much!  Here are some highlights from the last 2 weeks.  Don't forget to check out the Word Wall words in the right hand column of the blog.  Our last words are all question words that we use on a regular basis.  See if your child can use each one in asking you a question, and see if they remember how to draw a question mark.

We have been working on doing authors chair in a way that supports all of our writers and helps them to create new ideas.  The students begin the class with sharing their writing from the day before, and then after a round of applause from their group they take questions and comments from their peers.  The students have been quite good at sharing their ideas, and then getting right to work after everyone in their group has had a chance to read.

We had a great time working on our Thanksgiving art.  I hope that your children were able to share their's with you!!

Our class has been amazing at helping keep our classroom clean.  For the most part they help each other clean up, and are very proud of keeping our classroom in order!

We have been practicing a lot of different types of self regulation techniques.  In this video that we watched, we could either watch the screen or close our eyes to visualize as the narrator spoke.  Some students liked this way of calming themselves down, but some still prefer previous techniques we have practiced.

Last week we focused a bit on Hamburger writing.  We talked about how our writing could compare to a hamburger at different stages.  We used this chart to do a self-assessment of our own writing, and will continue to use it to think about what we want our writing to be by the end of the year.

As always, we read many books.  I know that I have missed quite a few, as the students like to borrow them from me after I read them to the class, and I don't always remember who has what book.  We are still focusing on social stories to build our classroom community into a kind, generous, and welcoming group.  With the joining of a new student today, and how welcoming your children were, I would say that we are growing in the right direction!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and a following great long weekend!  See you this Thursday for Literacy night!

Week 4 (last week)

Another exciting week in our classroom!  We have been doing so much learning, and it has been so much fun!  We got some new words for our word wall, read some amazing books, had some excellent conversations, and did some excellent writing.  We learned how to do author's chair, and we learned how to use scales to measure how many cubes it would take to balance it when weighing different items.  We continued to work on our Bug Books, and they are coming along very well!  We are practicing how to write our letters properly, and which letters hang below the line and which sit on top of it!

Here are the new words that we put up on our word wall.  These are words that we use a lot in our writing, and we really want to try and remember them so that we can use them correctly in our Journals.  Please have your child practice them at home by writing sentences using them:

• because
• friend
• it
• is
• my
• on
• of
• so
• the
• they
• then
• was

We have been learning some sketching techniques, such as shading and looking for shapes, when we are drawing.

Using scales to measure items in the classroom:

On Thursday we went outside to do some reading to enjoy the fabulous weather that day!

We read some great books last week:

We also learned a few tricks for remembering which way our b's and d's face!  Ask your child if they remember their favorite way: