Week 3

Think, think, think. Sometimes it is hard to come up with a topic to write about. We read the book, Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street and learned that sometimes just writing about what is happening around us can turn into a wonderful story.

This book helped to spur some amazing stories. We enjoy sharing them with our class.

We did an activity to help us brainstorm more writing activities. It was called "Tuck a Topic in Your Pocket". We drew our favorite person, favorite food, favorite place and favorite thing to do. Often these  spur wonderful stories, so it is a starting place when we are stuck. We tucked this paper in our writing folders for future reference.

We also got a Bingo game full of starters for stories. We are going to try to write all 9 different stories to get a Bingo. We also put this in our writing folder for when we get stuck on ideas for topics.

We read the book, Curious George Rides a Bike, in preparation for our talk about choosing a book that is a good fit for us.

We talked about how if a book is too hard, it is like riding a bike uphill. A book that is too easy is like coasting downhill on a bike. A book that is just right is like riding on a flat surface.

We talked about the book, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and also compared a Good Fit book to one that was just right for us, just like the porridge was just right for Goldilocks.

We worked on the word family "ing" and added it to our word family books. We also added two poems to our poetry folder that we learned in Mrs. Hobbs' class. Catalina Magdalena and The Birthday Chant.

We talked about 3 ways we can read a book. We can look at the pictures, read the words, or retell the story. We added this poster to our anchor chart notebook.

This week, we focused on the author, Kevin Henkes. We read Wemberly Worried.

We talked about character traits.

We applied our learning to Wemberly and filled out a worksheet with her character traits.

We talked about beginning, middle and the end of stories and wrote the main part of each in  Wemberly Worried. 

We really had a good time making pictures of Wemberly and making a text to self connection. We wrote about one thing that Wemberly worried about and one thing that we worried about.

We also read another Kevin Henkes book, Chrysanthemum. We did the same thing with character traits and parts of a story.

At the end of the week, we used a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the two stories and transferred our learning to a worksheet.

We were so excited to get back into the groove with Daily 5. Here we are practicing Read to Self, Word Work, Writing and Listening. This also allowed Mrs. Langham to get some testing done.

This week in Mathematics we continued to discuss and create plans for solving problems. Mystery Boxes is an activity where we counted objects in a box and then we recorded the quantity. 

After everyone completed the activity, we made a class chart that compared our results. We were surprised to find out that there were so many different totals and discussed how that could happen. We found out that you have to have a plan when counting and that it is a good idea to double check your results.

We compared our results for Roll and Record and found some very interesting patterns.

Other Math choices this week were ...

+1 /-1 Bingo

Compare, Start With/Get To

On the 10th day of school, Zero the Hero came by for a visit. We heard a great story about the importance of zero and drew pictures. Can you find zero?

We heard a very funny story about numbers taking the place of letters.

In Social Studies we celebrated our birthdays. We created a birthday bar graph and a birthday cake glyph. We really like collecting and interpreting data! That's what scientists do. 

We also saw the story Catherine the Great. This is a sweet story about a grandmother's wish for no presents on her birthday. Her friends and family present her with gifts from their hearts. In the book, Grandma Catherine says that she is as old as all of the numbers on a clock added together. Since we are planners and problem-solvers we found out how old she was.

We heard a rocking rhyming story about 12 mice who want a birthday cake. Do they get it? No. They didn't have a plan.

In addition, we read a book that reminds us that everyday we have many choices to make. 

In Science we read a book about our amazing brains. We made a three page overlay.

We also saw a video clip from Bill Nye about why our brains are folded or "wrinkled".  If you want to know the answer, ask your budding scientist. On Friday we made a model of our brains. We used a diagram to help us get it just right. Did you know that our brains have three main parts? Ask your budding scientist what each part is responsible for.

We heard a great story about an amazing scientist ... Albert Einstein and then created a Venn diagram. 

We can't forget Health. We saw a short video about six healthy habits. in our Logs we created a T- chart that organized "Go" foods (good for us) and "Whoa" foods (those that we eat sparingly). Our brains need healthy food. 

WOW! That's our week! 

Don't forget that picture day is on Wednesday, September 19th. If you would like to purchase pictures, we need your orders by Wednesday. The order forms were already sent home with package and ordering information.

If you haven't signed up for a fall conference, please check our availability at the tab at the top of this blog and e-mail your teacher with your request. Thank you!