March Madness

March has been a whirlwind of a month! We started the month off celebrating Read Across America. We worked hard on our information writing and had an Author's Celebration. In math we worked hard on understanding Place Value and used models to show our thinking. We also started to learn about habitats, plants, and animals during science. Here are just a few highlights from our last month!

Read Across America
The week was filled with lots of fun activities to help us celebrate a love of Dr. Seuss and a love of reading!

Our Kick off Assembly

Principle Vaughn as our community reader

                                     

Showing our LOVE of reading during Read to Self

Math

During math we learned all about place value. We practiced building, reading, and writing numbers into the hundreds. We practiced modeling 2 and 3 digit numbers with place value blocks and place value mats. We practiced conservation of number by building numbers the "hardest" and then the "smartest" way. We learned how to use tools such as place value blocks, the hundreds chart, a double tens frame, and mental math to begin to add, subtract, and make trades to deepen our understanding of place value.

Using Place Value tools to build and record 2 digit numbers:

Finding different ways to represent a value by building the first letter of our name:

Science

We began our new science unit by planting seeds and observing how our seeds changed as they grew. We also learned about habitats and made a classroom terrarium and a classroom aquarium that will be home to some organisms in our very near future. We even had a visit from Stony Brook and learned about some of the habitats we'll soon be visiting during our May field trip to Stony Brook Wildlife Sanctuary.

Observing our changing plants:

Learning about habitats with Ms. Marla from Stony Brook

Writer's Workshop

We worked so hard on our teaching books during this writing unit. Students grew so much as writers of informational books. They practiced adding important information, answering questions, and editing their pieces. They sustained the writing process by adding chapters to their stories and filling their books with interesting information, important details, and fun facts! We celebrated their hard work with an Author Celebration!

Learning from each other by sharing our Writing

Hope you enjoyed seeing some of our learning from March! Check back again soon!

Reader's Theater Highlights

We had a special Friday with 2 reader's theaters! That means 2 groups of readers got to show off their hard work. We practiced reading these scripts daily to improve our fluency and boy did it show! Both groups did a great job with their rate, phrasing, and expression. Hope you enjoy!

The Three Little Pigs 

Read by: Jackson, Liam, Maddie, and Sammie

The three Billy Goats Gruff  

Read by: Isabella, Fiona, Gracie, and Eddie

Once our groups had shown off their super reading we had a great discussion comparing both tales. We noticed similarities in structure and story elements. We compared characters and endings and found that both stories followed a similar pattern. Overall it was a very thoughtful think aloud!

Solids and Liquids

We had some great hands on science learning happening this week! Thanks to all of the parent helpers that came in to help run our centers! Our class teamed up with Mrs. Herring's and Mrs. Pollock's classes for some collaborative discovery. We had 4 centers each dedicated to a testing out a property of a solid. Here are a few highlights from our science day,


Roll and Stack
At this center children tested out their solids to see whether they could roll, stack, or do both. We learned that rolling and stacking are properties of solids. Children showed their learning on a Venn Diagram.

Sink or Float
At this center, children made predictions about which solids would float in water and which would sink. They then tested each solid and checked their original guess. They made some surprising discoveries.

Magnets
At this center, children tested their solids against magnets. They learned that some solids are magnetic, while other's are not. They learned that a solid is magnetic depending on the material that it is made out of. They then sorted paper solids on a t-chart.

Hardness
At this center, children tested how different solids feel by determining how hard they were. They sorted them from most hard to least hard and found that some solids were equally as hard. 

Hope you enjoyed learning about solids with us!! Our next science unit is all about liquids so stay tuned!

Reader's Theater Spotlight

We got to enjoy our first Reader's Theater today! Reader's Theater is a form of read aloud that engages children and promotes fluency. Children read aloud from a script or book to the class while demonstrating accurate reading, expression, and intonation. 

Today's group read the story The Picnic retold by Jenny Feely. This story is a Goldilocks play. The children were so excited to share their reading with the class! They practiced making their reading sound like talking, attending to punctuation, and reading clearly and accurately for their audience (the rest of our class.) 

After they finished reading the audience complimented the group on how well they read and how good they sounded! All groups will have a chance to participate in a reader's theater experience, but for now please enjoy round 1!

Great job Vivi, Nate, Rose, MJ, and Malachy!

December Spotlight

The weeks are so busy and packed with great tidbits of learning that it's often hard to pick just a few things to highlight. This post I want to give you a sense of some of the bigger concepts we've been working on throughout the month of December!


Science
We have started a new science unit on solids and liquids. This a very hands on approach to learning about the properties of solids. We began by observing 2 solids; a plastic spoon and a metal ball. Children compared and contrasted the objects in small groups. We then went on to explore a whole bag of solids and sort them by properties including shape, color, and size.

                                   

Writing
We have wrapped up our small unit stories! We celebrated our work and created a special space in our classroom to showcase our pieces. I hope you enjoyed the take home stories that came home last week! Our next unit will be teaching books (informational writing!)

 

Math
We continue to grow our bank of addition and subtraction strategies to help us be more efficient with our processes. The last few weeks the focus has shifted to making 10 strategies, thinking about related facts, and using addition to help solve subtraction problems. We also have a number of tools we use to help show our thinking. Some of these include double tens frames, Part Part Whole mats, and number lines. This week are specifically learning how to use our Part Part Whole mat as a tool for finding the missing part of both subtraction and addition equations.

Reading 
 In the meanwhile we are taking time before break to to do some writing connected to the Gingerbread Stories we have been reading! Writing for reading is a great way to strengthen comprehension skills and share responses to books we've read. We worked as a class to compare the many versions of the Gingerbread stories we've read over the last 2 weeks. We focused on major events, key details, and story structure. The children also worked on a collaborative project to retell the beginning, middle, and end of the story The Gingerbread Bear.

I hope you found this peak into our learning helpful and informative! Have a wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year!

Spotlight on October

And just like that it is Halloween! Another month has practically flown by. We have done so much in these last few weeks. Read on for some highlights!


Writer's Workshop
We are working on strategies to bring our stories to life for our readers! We have learned, practiced, and model unfreezing our characters to make them move and talk. We've learned about quotation marks and how dialogue can help tell a story. We have watched how authors take a small moment and tell it in itsy bitsy steps. We have learned how adding in our feelings and thoughts can add details for our reader. We even used drama to act out our stories with our writing partners!

Acting out our stories.....

                                                 


Collaborating with partners....

   

Close Reading
Close reading refers to the behavior of reading a text thoughtfully, making meaning as you go, stopping to ask questions, understanding explicit features, and inferring along the way. We spend a lot of time modeling close reading so that children can begin to demonstrate this behavior more independently. This week we focused on 2 high interest stories to help us gain experience with close reading. The first was I am Going by Mo Willems. The second book was Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet by Diane deGroat. Children demonstrated their understanding in their reading journals and within small groups.

Drawing pictures of the important parts of the text...




Illustrating key features....

 

               

 






Doubles and Near Doubles

We are continuing to build smart strategies for fluently adding and subtracting. This week we worked on doubles and near doubles. Children used manipulatives to build double facts and then recorded matching equations. We worked in small groups to build doubles again, but this time we added 1 or 2 cubes to show doubles plus 1 and doubles plus 2. We learned that knowing a double fact can help you solve a near double fact.

Building Double Towers.....

Playing games with doubles....

Thanks so much for reading about some of the learning happening in Room 27! Check back again soon! Don't forget we have our Halloween parade on Monday, October 31st at 9:30. Hope to see you there!