by Sarah Segall | Oct 10, 2015 | Preschool
Field Trip
We have planned our first preschool field trip for Wednesday, October 28 at 11:15. We will meet at Bizi Farms for a farm tour, hay maze, petting zoo, hay ride, picking of our favorite pumpkins, and then pumpkin washing. Please feel free to bring a lunch for after the field trip. (Field trip transportation is provided by the preschool families. We will not have preschool classes on the day of the field trip.)
We have put a sign-up sheet outside the preschool classroom door. This helps give us an accurate count for the day of the field trip.
We will use this field trip to reinforce all our fall studies as well as using our 5 senses on the farm.
Los 5 Sentidos
Learning about our body parts and their different functions makes for great preschool exploration. This week we focused on la vista, sight.
Our book of the week was Oso pardo, Oso Pardo/ Brown Bear, Brown Bear. This is a fabulous book to 
learn anima
l names and colors. We definitely use our sight for identifying colors! This also helped us play some fun I spy games/ Veo con mi ojito. (I see with my little eye.)
We worked on sequencing images from this story. Sequencing images is a great reading comprehension skill. It is the first step in story ‘retelling.’ You can try this at home after you read a story. Ask, “What happened at the beginning of the story?” (You can ask specific questions about the beginning, middle, and end of the story.)
We also used our eye spy game to look for letters and numbers around the classroom. This week we focused on the letters A, E. I. Really cementing the concept that letters make specific sounds is our goal here at the beginning of the year. Our older students will use this concrete concept when we begin syllables with our consonant study.
You can reinforce the concept of letters making sounds, which make up words, which then make sentences stories, by talking looking for our letters in the books you are reading at home or on signs when out for a walk or drive. Letters are everywhere and pointing them out to our little ones opens a whole new world for them.
These same activities can be done with number identification.
by Sarah Segall | Oct 10, 2015 | In The Loop
Language Arts
In Literacy, we did a great amount amount of word work this week. We introduced our new spelling list, as well as the vocabulary for our new listening selection. In spelling we are working on palabras graves and learning the rules of when to write tilde over the vowel on the the stressed syllable (second to last in this case). As usual, students generate the sentences for our spelling quiz, which we will have on Tuesday next week. Please make sure your child reads and practices writing our spelling sentences. We continued to do word structure analysis, focusing on identifying prefixes. Being able to identify prefixes is a crucial strategy for students to increase their word bank. They are fairly easy to identify as many of them follow similar English patterns: telecomunicacion, desconectado, atípico.
We had another successful week during our book club. Students did a fantastic job, not only staying on track with our reading calendar, but also, maintaining excellent records of our reading. During our discussions we focused particularly on two thinking strategies: making connections and inferences. Con cariño Amalia had a surprisingly sad twist this week. Students are applying metacognitive skills, in order to understand and explain the feelings and emotions of the characters in the story. This week students are supposed to be finished with chapter 11. They do not need to continue reading ahead during the weekend, but re read previous chapters and clarify questions (connect the dots) they might have. They were also asked to read the questions on page 130 so they can be ready for our class discussions next week.
One of the most significant ways to show and understand different cultures is through food. Please consider making one of the recipes shared in the book. I will be making flan de coco this weekend! Yum!
Math
Students started a new chapter on double-digit multiplication this week. For many this is a review, though it is always good practice to remember each of the steps involved before moving on to bigger factors and products!
Social Studies
In History this week we were very hard at work researching and writing about three MesoAmerican civilizations: Maya, Aztec, and Inca. It was great to see such hard workers actively engaged in their research and recording of findings. The reports will be due on Tuesday and we will spend time in class on Monday giving them a finishing touch. I’m so excited to see the results!
Science
During our investigation this week, students were asked to collaboratively design a method to separate a mixture of solids. Students had to create a plan together and then execute it, to corroborate their predictions. Students needed to have a clear understanding of the properties of the solids, as well as the use of appropriate tools. We have finished our first science investigation: Separating Mixtures. We will spend the first part of next week debriefing and finishing our first investigation summary. We will then get ready for our second investigation: Reaching Saturation.
Art
The 4th and 5th graders used crayon and watercolors to paint pictures of autumn leaves. They learned how to wet the watercolor paper first and then dab in paint and let the colors blend together. They also sprinkled salt on the wet paint to add texture. We talked about how watercolor is a transparent medium, as opposed to opaque acrylics or tempera. These Fabulous Fall Foliage paintings are on the wall by their classroom.
Music
Continuing our water songs theme from last week, Sr. Kit talked about the WAter Purification Instruments he will be taking to Cuba, and how they allow for pasteurization, saving huge amounts of fuel. We then brainstormed some song ideas for promoting the WAPIs to folks who don’t otherwise have access to uncontaminated water.
by Sarah Segall | Oct 10, 2015 | In The Loop
Language Arts
This week we learned about helping verbs/ verbos auxiliares. We looked through our new reader and in our anthology story, Rugby y Rosy for examples of these. (Ms. Marci also discussed what helping verbs look like in English.) To help with identification of these we worked on a fall leaf art project where each student chose a different verb. These are on our hallway display.
Students received their 4th reading book this week. They will receive their “Reading with a purpose” worksheet on Monday, due on 10/16. In this book students will be looking for helping verbs, words spelled with Z, and detailed sentences.
Spelling/ ortografia (Our Spelling test will be Tuesday 10/13)
cruzar cruzó cruzando empezó manzanas azul comenzó tazón mudanza vez cabeza pedazos voz martillazos belleza
Math
Adding large numbers takes a group!
This week we began our third unit: Addition up to 10,000. The focus is on understanding addition as it relates to place value. Students will be expected to be able to rename numbers (3,000 = two thousands and ten hundreds). The emphasis is on building procedural knowledge with deep understanding. Fluency is expected only within 1000.
We played a great game, Suma Mil, to practice our quick mental addition up to 1000. This was a great activity to combine our last unit, Mental Math, and our new unit.
Social Studies
We learned about the Roman Republic in class this week. We learned how the government during this time was different from the period when the Etruscan kings ruled and we compared it to our current form of government. The students talked about how the different classes (Plebeians, Patricians, and Slaves) interacted with one another and how and why the laws were different for each class. We played a “Who am I” game where students had to figure out what person was taped to their forehead by asking yes and no questions. The class loved this game! We worked on a map to identify the Strait of Gibraltar, the Sea of Marmara, and the Mediterranean Sea. On Thursday the class went to the computer lab and explored the BBC site on Ancient Rome. They were able to play games, read about different events, view photographs, look at a timeline and answer questions.
Science
We continued to work on reptiles this week in our science unit. Students did a webbing to identify the main characteristics, drew a reptile of their choosing and filled in their reptile column on their classification chart. On Thursday we began learning about birds. Miss Lisa shared with the class an Emu egg and a Robin’s nest.
English Spelling/Writing
The class began writing responses to both social studies and science review questions this week and then we were able to share some of these writings with the class. This allows everyone to reflect on what we have read in our lessons and practice some of our writing skills. We worked on restating the question in a topic sentence. We did not have a spelling test this week since it was a short week, both the spelling test and the sort activities will be turned in next Friday, Oct. 16. The students were given a new sort activities list with some added activities. Keep in mind that a 2 point activity should take 5 to 10 minutes, a 5 point activity should be around 15 minutes and a 10 point activity would take 20 to 30 minutes.
Art
The 2nd and 3rd graders started a Roman Mosaic project in art. We looked at a couple ancient Roman and Byzantine mosaics, and the students learned that the stone or glass pieces used in mosaics are called tesserae. The students are using magazines and catalogues to cut out paper tesserae for their mosaics of amphibians or reptiles. They’re off to a great start!
Music
We learned a bilingual song, “Somos el barco” and reviewed “Una paloma blanca.” Both songs were originally written with words in both English and Spanish, and Sr. Kit is practicing to sing them with kids in Cuba.
by Sarah Segall | Oct 10, 2015 | In The Loop
Language Arts
This week we read and discussed the poem “Que Sueño”. This poem talked about a mole who fell asleep in his clothes on top of seven mattresses. It was a great opportunity to compare and contrast animals while learning some new vocabulary with animal names. Because this poem was so short we were also able to review the work the kids have done in the past few weeks on rhymes and syllables. It is great to see that all of the students are taking the information they learned and are able to apply it to new readings. The activity that the students most enjoyed this week though was being able to finish our fall leaf projects. We used the Otoño book we received last week as well as past journal entries to write about what we like about fall. Many of the kids talked about how they liked the leaves changing colors, pumpkins, and of course Halloween! We even created a word bank of words that we could use while writing in our projects that can also be used on our upcoming field trip! I was very imporessed with all of the hard work the students did this week and I am excited for the upcoming weeks as well!
Math
Although we had a short week it was packed with so many fun activities! In math this week wrapped up our final chapter 2 activity. All the students have a very solid understanding of number bonds and it made our transition into talking about addition and counting on very simple. To set us up for more traditional addition, which we will begin next week, we started talking about counting on. We did this a lot during our calendar time where we would count to the end of the month beginning with today’s date. We also did this with the number of days we have been in school, as well as with random numbers on our number chart. This is a very simple but very important skill for the kids to learn and feel comfortable doing. Trying having your child count on at home with whatever numbers you happen to run into! Doing this with page numbers in a book, or street signs, is a great way to get them to notice numbers outside of the classroom.
Social Studies & Science
This week we have begun learning about the People of the Nile. The class read some trade books about the Ancient Egyptians and did our daily read-alouds in our curriculum books. We began filling in our civilization chart for Egypt and discovered that the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians had many things in common. We also colored a map in order to identify the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates Rivers as well as the Fertile Crescent.
In our Habitat Domain this week we began exploring the tropical rain forest. The class had fun using some of their senses to help them learn more about this special habitat. On Monday they listened to the sounds of the rain forest and tried to identify some of the animals they thought they might be hearing. We also read a Science A-Z book
Animals, Animals together and then worked on reading it individually. Tuesday we planted our own mini rain forest. The class got their hands dirty, digging in the dirt and touching the different plants that went into it. We
also did an experiment to understand the impact of deforestation on the soil of the rain forest. On Thursday we talked about all the things that come from the rain forest. The class then got to taste different kinds of fruit, cashews, and chocolate, all of these having origins in the tropical rain forest.
English Spelling/Writing
We worked on a new sort this week and did several activities. The class sorted their words into word families and practiced reading them out loud, listening for the vowel sounds. I was impressed last week that almost everyone was able to sort their words alphabetically. I’ve said it before, but these are such smart kiddos! We wrote responses to our Science and Social Studies lessons in our journals. Almost everyone wrote how I forgot to bring the lid in for our mini rain forest, this was very amusing to everyone and journal worthy too 🙂
Music
We talked about marching bands and listened to John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, identifying the instruments being played. We also sang the nonsense song Mairzy Doats, as sung by Burl Ives, best known as the snowman narrator in the cartoon of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.
Art
In 1st grade art, we started a couple projects. We looked at photos of Ancient Egyptian collar jewelry and used a thick paper plate to make the base for a collar which the students can wear. The students painted the plate gold and will add beads and other decorations next week. They also started their “Fence Portraits” by drawing directly on the fence post, which will be painted next week. Great job everyone!
by Sarah Segall | Oct 10, 2015 | In The Loop
Language Arts
This week we read La sombra de Osito. This is a story about a how a bear becomes annoyed at his shadow for following him around all the time. He tries many ways to get rid of his shadow before finally getting his shadow to “cooperate.” We learned how to hojear / browse through the story before reading it. Good readers know that a story is much more interesting to read if they take the time to wonder / imaginar about it before they begin to read it. We also set a purpose for reading / establecer objetivos. The little bear in the story had a problem to solve. We listened carefully to see how he tried to solve the problem.
In writing this week we worked on identifying letters, words, and sentences. We looked for sentences in our story and identified the capital letter at the beginning of every sentence as well as the ending punctuation. We talked about the different types of sentences and the punctuation used.
We have a class Sombras book making the rounds. Each students will have the opportunity to bring this book home. Please return it promptly the very next day. (It’s going to take 3 weeks to make the rounds!)
Math
Greater than games are fun!
Number identification within 10’s frames was a fun focus of the week. We learned about the hungry crocodile who only likes to eat the biggest number. The students provided complete sentences for comparing the number of objects in given groups. They practiced these as a whole group and in pairs.
“6 es mayor que 4.”
Social Studies & Science
This week we continued learning about maps and working on our map book. We read the book “Follow That Map” by Scot Ritchie. This book reinforced our learning of map symbols, legends, the compass rose, following directions and introduced us to different types of maps like weather maps and topographical maps. See if your student can describe several different types of maps to you. We also enjoyed mapping where each student lives on our Camas/Vancouver/Washougal maps. It is fun for the students to see where they live in relation to each other and to the school.
On Thursday we learned a little about Christopher Columbus and the purpose of his voyage to America. We learned about the three ships that sailed: Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. We did a paper craft of Columbus’ ship, the Santa Maria, along with a writing prompt “If I were an explorer I would….”. We will learn much more about Columbus in later in the year.
Music
We listened again to parts of the Carnival of the Animals, playing special attention to which instruments were used to represent different critters. Class members readily picked out passages on cello, piano, violin, clarinet and drums.
Art
The kindergarteners painted pictures of pumpkins in art this week. We looked at a real pumpkin and a basketball to compare their colors, shape and texture. After drawing a pumpkin shape with crayon, the students painted it yellow, and then added red paint directly on the paper to turn it orange. They also painted yellow grass, and added blue to turn the grass green. The kindergarteners did a great job mixing colors!
by Sarah Segall | Oct 3, 2015 | Preschool
This week we began our new theme: Los cinco sentidos. The five senses. During this month we will learn all about this very fun, interactive theme with lots of smells, sounds, tastes, textures, and sights.
This first week was spent introducing the theme in general. Fall is a fabulous time to talk about the senses. Ask your child what sense they are using during different activities that your family takes part in. Going for a walk through the brightly colored fall leaves you can talk about the different colors you see, how the smell has changed to damp earth and leaves, how the leaves make a whispering, crunchy sound, and how some leaves are rough while others are smooth. (Don’t taste the leaves!)
We completed a few fun projects but mainly we focused on different hands-on activities. Be sure to ask your child to tell you about the activities they did while at school but also use their projects as a starting point for great family talks. “Tell me about this …cinnamon. Do you hear the cinnamon? Do we smell it? How does it smell?” Etc.
Letras y Números
This week students were introduced to the letter I. This letter makes the long /e/ sound. This is a fun letter to form, top down, side-to-side. Preschool letter activities offer the opportunity to learn and remember letters from the alphabet in a fun and attractive manner. Learning our letters in a fun, meaningful way is important in the preparation for learning to read and write.
Ii
Has your little preschooler been counting a lot at home? We do a LOT of counting at school. We feel it is important to count objects, rather than singing a counting song, so your child can learn to associate the visual with the spoken. While making dinner or folding laundry ask your child to separate out a certain number of objects. “Could you find 3 socks for me?” Saying the number as they are touching each ‘sock’ is important.
by Sarah Segall | Oct 3, 2015 | In The Loop
Language Arts
The highlight of this week, in Literacy, was the kick off of our much anticipated book club! Our students never cease to amaze me! After we discussed the objectives/purpose for this project and created a reading calendar collaboratively, everybody jumped right into their reading. Students took home two packets: one of them states the expectations and has the daily reading log students are expected to fill in after their daily reading of fifteen pages in class. If students are not able to finish reading their fifteen pages in class, they need to finish reading and logging in at home. The other packet is the portfolio students are required to submit at the end of the book club on October 23rd. Please make sure you discuss the guidelines with your child. If you have any questions, please contact me. I encourage parents to read the book and be a part our our reading experience! Who knows, maybe we could have parents join in during our discussions! One of our students, Camdyn Segall, says: -Esta semana fue una semana espectacular! Empezamos el proyecto de otono: El club de lectura. Este es un club de nuestra clase. Nuestro libro es: Con carino, Amalia, escrito por Alma Flor Ada y Gabriel M Zubizarreta. Nosotros leemos 15 paginas en la escuela cada dia-.
Congratulations to all our students this week for doing such an amazing job during their Literacy assessments! I will be grading the assessments and giving individual feedback next week! We will also display their final published writing pieces (third person point of view) on the hallway for everyone to read.
Literacy Activity (English)
This week we created story maps. We were each given a book. Our job was to draw the protagonist, antagonist, conflict, resolution, beginning, middle and end of the story. We had lots of fun explaining these funny books this week! – By: Ava and Riley
Math
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! On Friday at Spanish with Sarah, we did a Rolling dice rounding game. 
We we played was we rolled a dice 6-7 times for a number. We rounded to the nearest hundred, ten-thousand and million. It was awesome! – By: Madi and Santiago
On Friday for math we did a rounding activity called the Rolling dice rounding game. We played with our partners and we each got a sheet of paper and dice. We played by rolling the dice 6-7 times for each number. Each number is a value in a hundred thousand or million number. Next, we rounded the number to the nearest hundred, ten thousands and millions. We had fun playing the game. Have a great weekend! – Bailey and Alana
Social Studies
This week our class made a codex of telling the journey of the way to school. We had to do four symbols (or hieroglyphs) of things we see on the way to school The next day we shared our codex with the class. – By: Alli and Carsen
This week we finished up our ancient civilization study. We learned about eh ancient Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas. We learned about their culture, their past, their leaders, inventions, religions, and much more. We made graphs to show all these things, and will put them to work for next week’s ancient civilization research project. More information will be sent home next week. We can’t wait to start with this fun and interesting project! We also had our poetry reciting this Friday. Big shout out to all the kids who took the time to memorize and recite the poem “Flowers are our only garments” from an ancient Aztec civilization. We will be sending home poems for students to memorize and recite. Make sure to ask your kids about the poems and civilizations. Have a great week! – Camdyn and Connor
This week we got into depth about the Inca civilization. The Incas built a fortress called the Machu Piccu that was between to peaks of the Andes Mountains in Peru. They believed that their emperor was the son of Inti, the sun god. They invented the litter, a chair they could carry on their shoulders. Their empire was from 1438 to 1532. They were conquered by Francisco Pizarro and his troop of men. Ask your children what it was like for the emperor to come to your village! Have a great weekend! – Grace and Azalea
Science
En ciencias, aprendimos mas sobre soluciones y mezclas. Tenemos un nuevo libro de ciencias titulado La mezcla de la materia. Los estudiantes deben estar leyendo este libro este fin de semana y encontrando las vocales y acentos que faltan. (Students should read this book this weekend and find the missing vowels and accents. An extra challenge!) Tambien hicimos un experimento para separar una mezcla de sal y agua. Nuestras predicciones fueron que para separar el agua, era necesario colocar los platillos al sol o a una temperatura alta para que el agua se evaporara. Pudimos comprobar que nuestras predicciones eran correctas. Luego, aplicando la habilidad de comparar y contrastar, observamos las caracteristicas de la sal antes y despues de la evaporacion. Entonces lo que descubrimos fue muy intersante! – Camdyn y maestra Paola.
Art
The 4th and 5th graders still needed to put some finishing touches on their Fence Portraits this week in art. They really look great! Several students also had time to paint a small watercolor of fall leaves. Next week we’ll do some more watercolor painting, and then start on an Aztec mask.
Music
This week’s theme was water in the desert. We started with Washington’s state folk song, “Roll on, Columbia,” by Woody Guthrie, talked about the dams and the birth of large-scale irrigation as a response to the Depression. Then we learned an Israeli folk song and dance”Mayim,” celebrating the finding of water in the desert.
Character Education
We wrapped up our theme of Kindness this week. We discussed how we began the year with this character trait since it is one of the most important ones to carry us through the rest of the year. The students did a fabulous job illustrating acts of kindness on their Kindness Counts posters. Hopefully everyone was able to check out their artwork Wednesday afternoon!
by Sarah Segall | Oct 3, 2015 | In The Loop
Language Arts
We began a new story in our Amistad theme: La casa del árbol. In this story we have focused on comparing and contrasting. Students were very creative in their word study/grammar journals! (Please feel free to come in and take a look at these anytime. Ask your child about them!)
We also focused on verbs, their use, and how they change. Students wrote in their journals : Verbs don’t always ‘show’ action. The verbs ser and estar express a state, condition, or circumstance.
Last week students wrote bullet points on the ‘highlights’ of their life. This week they used these to continue in the writing process with rough drafts for their autobiographies. We talked about topic sentences / oraciones principales and how the rest of the sentences in a paragraph support and explain this. (Students re-wrote one or more of their topic sentences and then turned them into detailed paragraphs for their autobiographies. Some students did not complete this in class and have written it in their planners, due on Monday.)
We talked about how in a rough draft you are often writing your ideas quickly, as they pop into your head, before you forget them. Because of this:
- There’s no need to worry about spelling, punctuation, or handwriting in a rough draft.
- Skip spaces in a rough draft so things can be added later.
- Abbreviate words you don’t know how to spell, or write only the part of the word you do know how to spell and leave space for the remainder.
- Mark or circle the words you think you’ll need to change later.
- Leave blank spaces if you can’t think of a word.
Spelling/ ortografia There are no Spanish spelling words this week.
Practicing our rounding skills with a snowball fight!
Math
This week we worked on mental estimation and mental rounding of numbers. Students shared their own strategies and steps for solving problems. We had a few very lively ‘snowball’ fights. Ask your child to fill you in on how we used ‘snowballs’ to practice our rounding skills. We also learned a cute little rounding song.
Next week we will begin our next math unit: Addition to 10,000. Students should be working in the Addition section of their ALEKS pie. I’d like for all students to work on completing their addition Quick Tables. This is the drill (flashcard) section for immediate fact recall. QuickTables also offers several games in which students practice the facts they have been learning. Each play of a game lasts about one minute.
Social Studies
Group Venn Diagram Activity
We began taking notes this week on our Ancient Roman Civilization read a louds. I gave students a format to help them organize their notes into different categories. We did a mini lesson on note taking and I stressed that these notes are just for them; they will not be graded on them, spelling and punctuation were not an issue as long as they could understand what they wrote, and that even pictures and symbols could be used. They are just a way for them to restate key ideas in their own words so that they may better understand and remember what they are learning. We began working on a Roman Civilization chart that included four elements that make up a civilization (Jobs, Government, Religion, Leaders), in addition we included contributions that this ancient society has had on our lives today. Several students also pointed out that writing was also an important part of what makes a society a civilization. These kiddos are so smart! We ended the week talking about the Roman god and goddesses and how similar they were the Greek ones we learned about last year.
How long is an anaconda?
Science
This week we spent some time reviewing what we have learned so far in our animal classification domain. We played a riddle game to review core content, did a venn diagram to compare and contrast three animal groups and made up our own mnemonic phrase poster to help us remember the five vertebrate animal groups. The class was also given a writing prompt “Scientists classify animals because…”. On Friday we began reading about Reptiles. If anyone has a reptile at home who would like to bring it in for a day next week, this would be a wonderful addition to our studies. We also practiced our classification song.
English Spelling/Writing
The class did very well on their spelling test last week. I noticed once again that most students who got all of their sort activities in, also did well on their test. Next week we will be adding several new activities to our list. Students may now get 10 points if they make flash cards out of their words and practice with someone at home, this will be worth 10 points. They may also get 10 points if they write each word 6 times. There will be more on the activity list on Monday.
In our journals this week we finished retelling in our own words the story of Romulus and Remus and the beginning of Rome. It was interesting to read what parts of the story each student incorporated into their retelling. As part of the editing process I am now having students reread their writing and circle words they believe they may have misspelled. We reviewed proper nouns this week and students also checked to make sure they capitalized these in their writing. To go along with our discussion of legends and myths, the class started their own myth in their journals on Thursday. These may end up being a published piece down the road.
Art
The 2nd and 3rd grad
ers used acrylics to paint their Fence Portraits in art this week. They all did a great job painting on the rough wood surface, and they will be able to finish these next week.
Music
The class divided into 2- and 3-person songwriting teams to create original songs to share with each other. Most groups spoke their lyrics on the first run-through, and added melodies the second time around. The Rockin’ Dudes sang their “Hammer Song,” Banana Splat sang “Running Lion,” The a Fall Festivals sang “Jack ‘o’ Lanterns,” Black Night sang “Starry Night,” and The Rockers sang “Winter.”
Character Education
We wrapped up our theme of Kindness this week. We discussed how we began the year with this character trait since it is one of the most important ones to carry us through the rest of the year. The students did a fabulous job illustrating acts of kindness on their Kindness Counts posters. Hopefully everyone was able to check out their artwork Wednesday afternoon!
by Sarah Segall | Oct 3, 2015 | In The Loop
Language Arts
It was a very exciting week with Maestra Ivary joining our class to team teach. She is looking forward to taking over our advanced first grade class next week.
Fall is one of our favorite seasons! So many fun things to do and opportunities to enrich our word bank using descriptive language. Just go for a walk and look around. Contemplate the beautiful scenery and changes in colors. We started our week reading our book titled Otoño, as well as a new song titled Una calabaza. We also focused on making connections between both the song and the reading, which we used to began a fall leaves project. Have your child, not only read to you, but also sing our song. The students were so creative that they even added a stanza! In writing we focused on writing complete sentences using capital letters and correct punctuation. We also started using words to indicate order: primero, después, luego, and finalmente. Try to have your child use these words when describing what they did during school this week!
Math
In math, using several different math tools, we did a lot of work with number bonds. This is the ability to compose and decompose numbers. Our kids are building great number sense, which will be crucial as we move into addition next week. We played a great game with beads and cups, where I was able to challenge the students and have multiple number bonds as well. Have your kids show you parte-parte-entero (part-part-whole) with their hands. We used these hand signals all week when talking about different number bonds. A good game to play with your kids this weekend is giving them two partes (parts) and have them figure out what the entero (whole) is. Then you can make it more challenging by giving them one parte (part) and the entero (whole) and have them figure out what the second parte (part) is.
Your child should have come home with a new math packet that goes over all of the number bond work we did this week. This is for your student to do at home and does not need to be turned back in.
Social Studies & Science
This week we were so busy!! Lots of fun activities and experiences, I love the enthusiasm that these 1st graders bring to class everyday. In social studies we
finished our Mesopotamian portion of our civilization chart, we discussed how important farming, religion, writing, and leaders were to this civilization. We tried our hands at Cuneiform this week, we talked about pictograms and how the wedge shapes of cuneiform were developed and then we made tablets in clay using cuneiform symbols. We created ziggurats out of popsicle sticks and did a ziggurat maze. On Friday we had a Market Day, where students got to trade and bargain for articles and food just like in a real Mesopotamian market.
In science we began learning about the Temperate Deciduous Forests and the animals that live their. On Monday the class went on a deciduous leaf hunt around school. We each gathered leaves and then examined them in class. On Tuesday we did a leaf rubbing with our leaves, these are displayed on our classroom door. Thursday we read a book about the forest animals and we got to look at and touch a pair of shedded antlers that were found in the forest. Friday we played a game to help us review the animals of the deciduous forest and what they do in their habitat and began a class book about the forest.
English Spelling
I am now sending an additional spelling sort home on Mondays. I encouraged the students to use these as an extra spelling activity outside of class but this is not homework. Some suggested activities could be to sort them, put them in alphabetical order, draw pictures and write the word, write a sentence for each one, or go on a word hunt in a magazine or newspaper and see how many of their words they can find and circle. I would love to hear about or see what they are doing at home, I probably could even find some special stickers to hand out for this too :).
Music
The class would like to write their own song, as the 4/5 class did when they were this age. We came up with topics ranging from raining cheeseburgers and mushrooms to blasting rockets. One of our more imaginative lyrics:
She told me to eat a squirrel
And then I ate a squirrel
And then I ate another one for fun!
It will be fun to see where their creativity takes us!
Art
The first graders finished their wonderful Scarab Beetle collages this week in art. We looked at photos of ancient Egyptian jewelry such as collar necklaces and rings that have Scarab designs on them. The students added legs, eyes, and more details with ribbon to their own Scarab beetles, and then wrote out the name of their beetle. You can see these fun insects on the bulletin board at school.
Character Education
We wrapped up our theme of Kindness this week. We discussed how we began the year with this character trait since it is one of the most important ones to carry us through the rest of the year. The students did a fabulous job illustrating acts of kindness on their Kindness Counts posters. Hopefully everyone was able to check out their artwork Wednesday afternoon!
by Sarah Segall | Oct 3, 2015 | In The Loop
Language Arts & Math
This week we began our new Language Arts unit: Sombras (Shadows). The purpose of this unit is to engage your children in reading about, thinking about, and actively investigating shadows on their own. By the end of this unit, your children should have sharpened their questions about shadows and deepened their understanding of them. More importantly, they should have come to a preliminary sense of what scientific inquiry involves and the close connections that exist among reading, discussion, writing, and the inquiry process.
This week we focused on the reading comprehension strategies of: asking questions, monitoring & clarifying, making predictions, and cause and effect. We practiced using context clues to help us understand new vocabulary and worked on identifying the different types of sentences. We read two great books to practice all these strategies: Pablo Pablo en busca del sol and Las sombras. For grammar this week we worked with several new letters and site words. Students are still needing to slow down and carefully form those letters from top to bottom!
Walking our site words.
Letters: T, F, D, LL (this letter looks like the L but makes a /y/ sound)
Sight Words: un (a), una (a), este (this), esta (this)
We also worked on identifying the different types of sentences we see in our books. We are working on identifying and providing the correct punctuation. Students have now been introduced to the upside down question mark and explanation point. In Spanish you always know, right from the beginning of a question or exclamatory sentence, what expression to use.
This week in math we added several things to our daily calendar routine including: tens frames, a new pattern: calabaza, hoja, calabaza, hoja (pumpkin, leaf, pumpkin, leaf), and our pumpkin tally chart for the number of days in school. We also worked on identifying the numbers that come before and after a given number on the number line. Great job!
We began working on our subitizing skills. Itʼs an important skill to be able to look at a group of objects, know how many there are (without always counting), and be able to add a few more by counting on, rather than starting back at 0.
We also welcomed fall with a great fall poem and fall math activity showing which number comes next. Being able to state the number that comes next is a great counting-on skill. They did a wonderful job!
Social Studies & Science
This week we wrapped up our plant unit. The kids learned how to take the unit assessments which
involved a true or false section, color according to the answer, and circle the correct picture. We went over the answers together and corrected and discussed any mistakes. Everyone did very well on their first assessment! The students have been recording the plants growing in different conditions in their science journals. We have also enjoyed reviewing parts of plants by watching our grass heads grow and our individually planted bean seeds grow.
We are now focusing on maps and our place in the world. We continued working on our books that help teach the students their address, city, state, country, continent and planet. We did some more mapping activities like locating each of our addresses on a map, mapping the playground while learning about a map key and how to use it, and looking at different maps. Please continue working with your child on learning their address.
Character Education
We wrapped up our theme of Kindness this week. We discussed how we began the year with this character trait since it is one of the most important ones to carry us through the rest of the year. The students did a fabulous job illustrating acts of kindness on their Kindness Counts posters. Hopefully everyone was able to check out their artwork Wednesday afternoon!
Music
This week we took our first listen to classical music: Saint-Saëns’ “Carnival of the Animals,” alternately guessing what animals we heard and moving like the animals in the music. Picture: being kangaroos.
Art
The kindergarteners did a wonderful job with their scarecrow collages! They learned how to cut basic shapes (circle, rectangle, halfcircle) to make the head, hat, shirt and pants of their scarecrows. Then they added raffia for hair, hands and feet. All of this was glued to their landscapes from last week. These colorful, creative scarecrows are on the bulletin board at school.
learn anima
