Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is about a boy who wakes up with gum in his hair and he has a feeling that it is going to be a bad day. Things spiral downward from there. This was also a book to show the importance of using commas.
In The Garden on Green Street just as neighborhood residents were celebrating the beautiful community garden that they had created, they receive notice that the land has been purchased and is to be turned into a parking lot. We learned how they solved their problem. This inspiring story looked at many conventions. We loved the organization and the words that helped move this story along (first, then, next and last). We also enjoyed the letter that was written in the middle of the book too.
Commas really do make a difference and if we misuse them, it can change the whole meaning. We enjoyed how the proper use of commas in all the right places can really make a big difference in the book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
Our Librarian Won't Tell Us ANYTHING is a hilarious story about how a little girl is convinced that the librarian is unhelpful because she won't give her what she asks for. But when she is paired with another student, the librarian is really giving her the tools to find the information she needs so that she might be successful on her own. Her collaboration with the other student blossoms. This book teaches us many lessons, but we focused on the author's use of using all capital letters to emphasize key words.
In Tulip Sees America we learn of a boy's desire to tour America. Growing up, his parents were homebodies, so when the boy is older, he takes a trip across the country with his dog, Tulip. This book was great to use for organization and detail. We also paid close attention to the use of capital letters for names of places.
The favorite book of the week was The Great Fuzz Frenzy. Life in prairie-dog hole is peaceful until, out of nowhere, a big, round object falls from the sky (a tennis ball) and creates chaos. At first the animals are apprehensive, but once they realize that the object will cause them no harm, they begin plucking green fuzz from the ball and turning it into scarves, capes, tutus, and other accessories. When the ball is plucked bald, there's an all-out war. Big Bark, the leader steps in to wage peace only to find himself in peril forcing the other prairie dogs to band together. Not only was this an enjoyable book, it is almost entirely made up of dialogue, so we focused on the use of quotation marks in a story.
Beatrice Doesn't Want To really captivated our attention. It is a spot-on characterization of the overburdened big brother and the self-centered sister. Henry has a book report to do and must take his book-despising sister to the library with him. During the first two trips to the library, Beatrice does nothing but whimper and whine and pester her brother. But on the third trip to the library, the librarian's read-aloud takes hold of her imagination and changes her mind about books forever. We paid close attention to the carefully crafted prose and the repeated phrase in this book "But, I don't want to."
Aunt Flossie's Hat is a wonderful book that tells how stories created from memories are often the best. Aunt Flossie has so many hats and each hat has a story to tell. This book help our suspense as we were curious how Aunt Flossie was able to retrieve her favorite hat that had blown into the water. All of us raised our hands with stories to tell of grandparents and other relatives and memories that we have. What a great way to springboard new stories. These are all great story starters and we loved the author's attention to detail.
Punctuation Takes a Vacation is a book about punctuation that left the classroom and how stories and letters do not make sense without them. We enjoyed reading this book and guessing which punctuation had written a letter to the class.
In the book, So You Want to Be President, we learned tons of information on what it takes to be a president. This book is full of facts about presidents such as the tallest, shortest, heaviest, pets, musical talents and education of many of our presidents. We were reminded when reading this story how all names begin with a capital letter.
With the upcoming election, we had our own mock election. Each student at Hill got to see what it is like to vote for our upcoming president and actually cast their own votes. We liked getting our own "I Voted" sticker, just like we have seen many adults wearing.
During our writing time this week, we chose our favorite story this year and kept it in our writing folders. We are going to work on revising and editing this piece so that we can turn it into a published piece. All of our other stories went home this week. We decorated our writing folders and brought them home to share with our families. Please take some time to look over these writing pieces with your child. My goal was to get them to feel comfortable to write this first 9 weeks and to not worry so much about spelling or conventions. I want them to write from their heart and feel confident about their writing. We will be working on this one story until we get it ready to publish into a book. We know that this a long process and we are excited to become authors.
Sight words this week were: of, some,
Our traveling Tuesday science rotation focused on energy. We learned that sound is a form of energy and we watched a short BrainPop video to show how sound moves.
We did a science experiment on sound using Mason jars filled with varying levels of water. We discussed which how the highest and lowest pitch and we talked about why.
In Mrs. Clark's rotation we did an experiment about insulators and conductors of heat energy. In Mrs. Hobbs rotation we saw a video segment about the many different kinds of energy (mechanical, chemical, heat, electrical, sound, light) and them we sorted the type of energy with its description and an example.
Our Social Studies focus was on Halloween and Dia de los Muertos. We saw a short video on the history of Halloween and why it is celebrated. Then we used our Math skills to play a game, Big Fat Bat. We also completed a jack-o-lantern glyph, and another jack-o-lantern on the 100 chart. Of course, there was a Math story problem. This one had multiple steps!
The video we saw on Dia de los Muertos explained that this holiday is celebrated with special food, dance, music, and decorations. We made our own papel picado.
Space Case is a fun story by James Marshall. It is about a space alien who comes to Earth on Halloween night. We talked about how this character learned about an unfamiliar culture.
In addition to all of the Halloween fun, Ms. Rosso came by for a Math Pentathlon lesson. We practiced placing cubes in a standard configuration. This will help us count quickly when we play Calla.
We read two Halloween counting books that were also innovations of familiar classics.
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| So sorry. This picture just won't rotate. Sounds like a Halloween trick! |
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