Our focus in literacy this week was, after reading and listening to different pieces, to identify the author’s point of view. Stories are told from the perspective of a first or third person narrator. Students experienced what it feels to be telling the story (personal narrative), taking complete part in the action. They also experienced what it means to be an observer who reports the actions that others execute. We had rich opportunities to work on developing vocabulary, as well as applying accurate written language structures, according the author’s point of view. Working in groups, we exchanged our personal narratives on Thursday. Students are expected to rewrite a draft of their partner’s story, but this time, from a third person point of view. I cannot wait to hear their pieces on Monday!
Please take note of the following:
Students will be assessed on their listening comprehension on Thursday (La tierra que perdi)
Students will demonstrate their knowledge of the language and word work we have done to this point on Friday.
Science
In science, students conducted the second part of investigation 1: separating a salt solution. The purpose of this investigation was to separate a solution through evaporation. During this investigation we made math connections reviewing units of measurement. We discovered that 50ml is almost the same as 50g. We talked about mass, weight and using appropriate tools to measure amounts. In science, every variable affects the results! This week, we will finish our investigation 1, conducting some fun hands-on work.
Math
We added rounding to our practice in number sense this week. The students did a great job of rounding to the nearest thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand and millions place. We finished off the week with a chapter test. Students will have the scored tests to bring home on Monday so you can see how well they did. We also spent some time getting ahead in our individual ALEKS work. Students are advancing quite proficiently!
Social Studies
In history this week we started a unit on the ancient Meso-American civilizations. We’ve learned, so far, a bit about the Maya and Aztec peoples and will continue our research further next week. The students did a fun activity working with hieroglyphs to create their own “Codex” – using symbols instead of words just like the ancient Aztecs. Their codex explains what they see on their way to Spanish With Sarah every day! I’m looking forward to seeing them all upon completion.
Language Arts (English bonus activity)
Today we created story boards to enrich our comprehension skills. We had a great time creating illustrations for the Title, Author, Protagonist, Antagonist, Conflict, Resolution, Beginning, Middle, and End of individual picture books we were each provided with for the activity. Students showed not only amazing creativity – but also keen insight into the different parts of what every good story holds. I look forward to hanging their beautiful story boards up in the classroom next week!
Art
The 4th and 5th grade students just about finished their Fence Portrait art projects. They will put a few finishing touches on them next week, and then I’ll post a picture of these Fantastic Fence portraits! A SPECIAL THANKS to Mr. Martinez for sanding all the fence pieces!
We had a very fun, busy week in 2nd/3rd grade! Students worked in pairs to complete a graphic organizer for our story Niña ángel, Niña dragón. Reading is fun but reading with a purpose, to identity 4 key points in the story and main message, provides us with a different motivation and focus. I loved hearing the students using their Spanish with each other during this activity, which we chose to do outside.
Cause and Effect was another grammar point we focused on this week. This was fun to discuss, give examples, put in our word study notebooks, and illustrate.
We talked about the writing process and began the first step in writing our autobiographies. Students made a list of, what they felt, were the most important (or most interesting) things to happen in their life.
Through our literature we learned about Pronombres / Pronouns, when, where, and why we use them. Students were already familiar with the basic:
yo- I nosotros – We
tú-you
él–he ellos – they
ella-she ellas – they
usted– you (formal) ustedes – you (plural)
They also learned about other pronouns, to replace names of objects and places.
el….. – lo Write your name. (Escribe tu nombre.) Becomes: Write it. (Escribelo.)
la…..-la
los….-los
las…..-las
Spelling/ ortografia(words with a soft c) Our test will be Tuesday.
hacia especial
reverencia lección
espacio silencio
respiración narices
abracé tracé
empecé cejas
pececillos golpecito
manecillas
Math
This week we began our Mental Math and Estimation Unit. The focus of this unit is to enable students to
Mental Math Game
become more flexible and fluent with their thinking. The rich content of this chapter is presented early in the year so that it can be reinforced all throughout the year. It was fun to dig in with our base ten materials to enable more students to solve problems mentally.
We also played a game in pairs. Ask your child to tell you what their mental steps are. Being able to describe our mental math now will help us later when math problems become more complex. (When adding or subtracting in your head do you start with the ones or tens first? Do you borrow, form a solid ten, etc. There is no right or wrong way to do it.)
example: 63 – 45. Someone might say: First, I look at the ones and know that 3-5 doesn’t work so I make it 13-5 and I know that equals 8. Then, I know I borrowed a 10 so it’s now 50-40, which equals 10. 10+8=18. My answer is 18. This seems cumbersome when you write it out or say it, but in reality your brain is doing these calculations very quickly. Being able to describe your thought processes now will come in handy later.
Social Studies
We have begun our unit on ancient Rome this week. We reviewed what is qualified as a civilization and how ancient Rome fits this qualification. Everyone is very excited to learn about this great civilization. We located Rome on the map as well as other areas that were effected by the Roman empire. We also talked about how today Rome is the capitol of Italy and how many of the contributions of ancient Rome have influenced present day. We discussed the meaning behind BC/BCE and AD/CE, and began putting a timeline together to capture the chronology of events during the Roman empire’s influence over Europe and Asia, and related this to the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Greece. We read about the legend of Romulus and Remus, and added the Tiber river to our class’s “Living Map”. I have already had request for a “Roman Day” as one of our culminating activities at the end of this unit. More on this to come later. I am thrilled with the enthusiasm that everyone brings to our studies and I’m sure that this will continue to be a very exciting unit.
Science
This week we continue our animal classification domain in Science. We focused on amphibians and worked on web graphic organizer to identify characteristics of this vertebrate group. As a way to review what we have learned so far in this domain, we played a game together called “Who Am I”, where students picked an image card of an animal and then had to either act out the animal or give the class clues as to it’s characteristics ( “I am an aquatic creature that has gills”). Our class loves any opportunity to act things out! Students also worked together in collaborative groups to create a drawing of a new creature that fits into different classifications of the animal groups they have learned about. Each group then got to name their animal and share with the rest of the class. This was a fun and creative way for them to review key concepts that we have learned so far. On Friday we had the opportunity to work with the 1st grade class to help them make dioramas of animal habitats. The 2/3 graders did a fabulous job sharing their knowledge about animal characteristics and using their creative skills to help out with this activity.
English Spelling/Writing
The class had their first spelling test last week and over all did great! I think our new spelling activity homework is going to be a nice addition to what we are doing in class with our sorts this year and will really help the students learn their words. Please make sure that your child does keep track of how many points they need to do (both in class and at home) so that they are able to meet their goal each week. This is an added responsibility on their part, but I believe they are very much up to the task. Spelling activities are due on Friday. For writing this week the class wrote in their journals the story of Remus and Romulus and their interpretation of why this legend is important to Romans. The class has also been working on writing their animal shape poems.
Art
The Second and Third graders started their “Fence Portrait” project this week in art. They were able to look at most of the 4th and 5th grade fence portraits for inspiration. The students sketched the face and then transferred the drawing to the wood fence pieces. Next week they will paint their fence people with acrylic paint. They look great so far! A SPECIAL THANKS to Mr. Martinez for sanding all the fence posts!
Music
Sr. Kit brought his harp for the first time this year, and the students listened to several pieces with their eyes closed, then described what they saw “on the back side of their eyelids.” We also tried moving in response to different styles of music, ranging from celtic to several Latin American traditions and more modern compositions.
We had a lot of fun with morning routine and our morning messages this week. After practicing our calendar routines students have to answer a different question. One question this week was: How many siblings do you have?
It has been great to review with students key concepts learned last year. They have a solid understanding of letters, sounds and most of their high frequency words. As well as how to use them in different contexts. We will be digging into our reading next week. Expect your child to bring their take home reader and practice reading every night. This weekend students took home their writing, songs and poetry binder. I hope they had a chance to sing and read their poetry to the family. We had a great time reviewing the concept of “rimas”(rhyming words) in class. We also worked on “sustantivos”(nouns).
We also worked on the question word “como”, and our libro de palabras importantes. Ask your child to tell you about this book. (It’s going to be a full, rich resource by the end of the year!)
Math
In math we continued to work on calendar math routines. We continued with different ways to represent numbers and then we finished our first review unit.
The highlight of the week was our data comparison game, where kids had to roll the dice and keep track, with tallies, of the numbers that were more common. Then we did a class survey. Students did an amazing job analyzing the results.
We worked on math story problems and scenarios, applying all math concepts of composing, decomposing numbers, counting on, and figuring out ways of counting efficiently.
One game that families can play at home to reinforce this concept is:
Give your child a handful of beans. Then count them by one. Ask your child what would be a more efficient way to count them.
-You can also have them put 10 beans on the table. Have your child look away and remove some. Ask your child how many were removed. Take turns looking away. You can make it trickier adding more beans!
Social Studies & Science
This week we began our unit on early world civilizations. The class began by finding the area known as Mesopotamia on the world map and identifying it as part of Asia. We discussed the importance of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and how they were important for trade and farming. We also talked about how the use of canals were important for bringing water to everyone as the development of crowded cities near the rivers, such as Babylon, made it more difficult to get direct access to the water. We learned about the wedge shaped symbols pressed into clay tablets called cuneiform, the Mesopotamian form of writing.
We will be making our own cuneiform tablets next week. We began a class chart to help us understand what makes up a civilization and how Mesopotamia had the five key components to classify it as a civilization. Later we will be using this chart to also look at and compare Egypt. We also discussed the “Golden Rule” and how this applied to us today as well as this ancient civilization that we are studying. We then brainstormed ways in which we could apply this rule to everyday situations and then acted out some of these in class. I am so impressed with what high level thinkers we have in our 1st grade classroom.
In our animal habitat unit this week we have learned about the East Africa Savanna . On Monday I brought in an African carved mask of an elephant and the class had fun trying it on and acting out some of it’s characteristics. We played a food chain game where each child was given a picture of an animal or a plant from the different habitats we have learned about so far. They then had to decide if they were a predator or prey and where they fit in the food chain.
As a review to the Sonoran desert we did a science experiment to better understand how cactus absorb and store water during rainfalls. On Friday we had the opportunity to work with the 2/3 class to make our habitat dioramas. All the students had a great time collaborating to create these fun projects. I was impressed with how everyone worked together to share their knowledge about animals and their habitats.
English Spelling/Writing
This week word sorts were on the word families “in, un, and an“. The class met with me in small groups to do some word work, they sorted individually and they practiced reading all their words. They also added words that they came up with on their own to each of these word families. Next week I will send home a copy of their word list so that they may continue to sort them in different ways at home.
We did lots of writing in our journals this week. The students love sharing their writing and pictures on the overhead and this gives them a great opportunity to present in front of the class. I encourage everyone to use inventive spelling in their journals; however I also encourage them to use the correct spelling of words they know from their sort lists, our word wall and our vocabulary of the week. In addition students are beginning their own “dictionary” in the back of their journal of words they frequently use but need help remembering how to spell.
Music
We discussed how several pieces in Sr. Kit‘s harp repertoire came to be titled, including “The Waltz of the Dolphins,” and “Shadow Spirit.” We also listened to and discussed several pieces he is regularly asked to play for weddings.
Art
The First Grade students started a Scarab Beetle collage project this week in art. They learned that the ancient Egyptians revered Scarab Beetles as a symbol of good luck, and that beetle designs are often used in ancient Egyptian art. Ask your student why these beetles are sometimes called Dung Beetles! The firstgraders are designing their own Scarab Beetles using various papers, and we will finish these bugs next week.
One of the stories we read this week was Annbelle Swift, Párvula. When Annabelleʼs older sister, Lucy, tries to prepare her for her new school experience, not all of Lucyʼs advice is helpful. In the end, however, Lucyʼs tutoring finally pays off. Your children love to share about themselves so we heard many stories relating to their own experiences. We worked on the reading comprehension strategies of Asking Questions and Predicting. Right now I am modeling this for the students so they will begin to actively do this on their own. These are definitely things you can do when you are reading at home: “Why do you think he did that?” or “What do you think will happen next? Why?”
Students welcomed fall with a journal writing, detailing their favorite things about fall. For this writing we brainstormed possible answers, created a word bank, and worked on leaving spaces between our words, using a capital for the first word in our sentence, and the correct punctuation at the end. The students used the classroom writing rubric to self-monitor.
We continued our daily letter practice. Handwriting is important and we will do more and more writing as the year goes on. Letter recognition (Spanish) is also coming along very nicely.
In math this week we introduced Math Interactive Journals. These will stay at school but are a great way for students to practice: fine motor skills, manipulating objects, checking their math knowledge, reinforcing classroom lessons. This week the students added a frog pocket and read: Hay 3 (1,2,4, 5) ranas. (There are 3 (or 1,2,4,5) frogs.) They also added tens frames and placed the correct numeral next to the correct frame.
Letters studied this week: Ss, Bb, Nn, Pp
Sight Words introduced this week: El (the), La (the), Las (the), Los (the)
How do we know when to use which the? Practice, listening, exposure, reading. The students will automatically hear the difference, from repeated exposure, and understand singular/plural and then eventually masculine/feminine. For now, it’s just exposure and knowing it’s either one or more than one.
Social Studies & Science
This week we compared deciduous to evergreen trees and learned that deciduous trees lose their leaves in the fall and evergreens stay green and keep their leaves year round. We went on a nature walk and identified both of these. We collected leaves of both and sorted them according to whether they were deciduous or evergreen. We learned about clorophyll being the chemical in a plant that makes it the color green. The students had fun coloring a tree with clorophyll (we used spinach to color the leaves on a tree green).
We learned about interesting plants. See if your child can tell you tall a Sequoia tree can grow (measured in kindergartners), or how big a Rafflesia flower grows (3ft.), or what plant has the smallest seeds (orchid) or what plant is carnivorous (Venus flytrap).
We also learned how plants provide people oxygen, food and important products!
Della shared a book she wrote and illustrated titled Plants in the World. I love when students extend their learning at home. The book was enjoyed by all! Thank you, Della!
Lastly, we worked on Our Place in the World books. We also learned about maps being drawing of something or someplace from a bird’s eye view. We started out mapping our hand and then our classroom and then located each of our homes (approximately) on our Camas map.
Music
This class met Sr. Kit’s harp for the first time, and discovered that several of the songs they have learned can be accompanied by harp as well as guitar. The class also closed their eyes to see what images appear on the backs of their eyelids. In addition to rainbows, mermaids, unicorns and dolphins, one student saw soldiers – rather fascinating, as the composer of that particular piece was a regimental harper during Paraguay’s Chaco War.
Art
This week in Kindergarten Art class, the students learned about landscape painting. We looked at Gauguin’s “Tropical Landscape”, and the students learned how to use a variety of lines to draw a sky, mountains, and fields. Then they used tempera paint to add color to their picture. The students did a wonderful job! Their landscape paintings will serve as the background for a scarecrow collage which they will make next week. A SPECIAL THANKS to Alora’s mom, Tracy, who is helping out during the kindergarten art class! Also, a SPECIAL THANKS to Andres’s dad, Mr. Martinez, for sanding all the fence pieces which each grade level will be using.
We continued with our family theme and read the great book: El canguro tiene mamá by Eric Carle. This story provided repetition, allowing for great student participation. This was also a great introduction to many animals and their babies.
We had a great time matching pictures of mother animals with their babies. Do you have any books at home to reinforce this concept?
Our many kangaroo / canguro projects also provided great practice in our fine motor skills with: cutting, tearing, painting, gluing, and coloring. We also worked on following step-by-step instructions. Our younger students are working on staying on task for longer periods of time, to complete their projects. While our older students are working on multi-step instructions and refining their fine motor skills to complete projects in a more timely and presentable manner.
Our kangaroo face /cara del canguo was a great activity to practice our gluing skills. (This is not as simple or easy as it sounds!!) We talked about how many eyes, ears, and noses each face should have and where each part should be placed.
Letras y Números
This week students were introduced to the letter E. This letter makes the same sound as the E in elephant an E in egg. Pre-K students are asked to use their fine motor skills to form the letters. This letter is formed from right to left, down, then to the right. The pencil is then lifted and a line written from left to right in the middle.
Ee
We also worked with the number 2. All students worked on identifying the number two, putting together groups of two, specifically groups of two animals. Older students worked on writing the number, starting with the curve, a diagonal line, with a sharp turn to the right. Do you find your kiddo counting a bunch? Counting can be fun! Here’s a cute video for counting in Spanish.
We sequenced the story, did a walk- on-rhyme where we act out parts of the story in order. We also worked on our cutting skills with Goldilock’s hair. To reinforce size concepts at home point out, or have your kiddo point out, things that come in different sizes and then tell you what they are. Can they do it in Spanish and English? During meals talk about temperature.
A fun new song from this week:
Sol Solecito
Sol solecito, caliente me un poquito, (Sun, little sun, warm me up a little bit)
Hoy y mañana y toda la semana. (Today and tomorrow and all of the week.)
Our calendar pattern this week was:
abuela, abuelo, abuela, abuelo
And our circle pattern was:
Rojo,azul, amarillo
We worked on sequencing events from stories.
We used pattern cards to continue patterns.
We used tijeras/scissors and pegamento/glue to complete art projects.
Letras y Números
Each week we will be learning about a new letter of the alphabet. Depending on the skill level of your child they may simply be exposed to how the letter looks, the sound it makes and objects that begin with that sound. The more advanced their level the both upper and lower case. They may be asked to find objects or pictures of words that begin with that sound. It all depends on the skills of each child and how they are developing (sometimes age dependent). Please note: All letters and numbers Yes, your kiddos will count much higher. Right now we are working on number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, numerical order, writing numbers, etc.
This week: number 1, and Letter A a (the dentist’s favorite letter, say “Ahhh”)
Next week: number 1, and Letter E e (as in egg or elephant)
Starting a new school year means learning new routines (and lots of questions about them!).
Come spend some time in your child’s classroom as the teachers provide answers and insight into the daily schedule and curriculum for your child’s class.
In Literacy, we continued to discuss and share different aspects of our cultural heritage by introducing our students to a new story(autobiography) for our listening center: La tierra que perdi: aventuras de un niño en Vietnam. Next week, students will be working on listening comprehension work that relates to the story. An important activity we do for listening and reading comprehension is to preview key vocabulary and sentence structure they will encounter in the stories. Students use this knowledge to understand the message of the story, along with other strategies we have learned (cognates).
Students are encouraged to apply this knowledge to other contexts. On Friday, students took a spelling assessment, writing sentences that were generated by the class. They also took a reading assessment of the book Microbios: amigos o enemigos, which was their last week’s takehome book and that they had opportunities to practice in class during group reading/discussion time. Students took home a new book this week. This book will be assessed in two weeks. Please make sure that your child practices his/her reading on a daily basis.
Science
On Monday, using different solids and water, students conducted their first investigation: Separating Mixtures. During this investigation students experienced first hand what a mixture and a solution are. Please ask your child to tell you the details of this project, as one of our assignments in class is to understand and retell procedures. One fun group activity was to sequence the experience by putting the sentences in the correct order. Students are expected to apply scientific thinking processes to conduct investigations and build explanations: observing, communicating, comparing, organizing, relating and documenting.
Things to remember:
Students have a homework packet that is due Friday, September 25th. Please return the packet with the orange paper signed. Conversation cards are for the family to keep and generate a discussion around the topic read by your child.
Students took home a new book in their binders and are expected to read it on a daily basis and bring back to school every day.
Students took a library book home.
Over the weekend, students are expected to answer a paper that has three questions about their cultural heritage. This is due Monday and will be the basis for a project in class.
I would like to express my gratitude to all my students as they celebrated with me my beloved country’s birthday on September 18th. It is definitely hard to spend this day so far away from my land, family and friends, but it also makes me really happy that I get to spend it with my students, sharing and honoring an important part of my cultural heritage: my language.
Have a great weekend!
Maestra Paola
Math
Our students took the lead this week in sharing what went on in each subject with Ms. Sally. Here is what they had to say:
This week in math we studied place value up to 10,000,000. We have been assigned a lot of practice work this week. Our class took a test for place value to see if we understood it. We will still work on it for a little longer. Make sure you work on Aleks for at least 15 minutes!
Have a great weekend! – Riley and Azalea
This week in math we have studied place value. We have been learning numbers up to ten million. We have done lots of work to learn faster. We have done lots of patterns of numbers to find the values of the numbers. We also have been practicing saying and writing numbers. Have your kids practice saying these numbers: 21,986,398 7,256,324 9,000,004 2,302, 563 1,659, 007
Have a good weekend – Carsen and Ava
Read Aloud
This week we enjoyed our read aloud book, Out of My Mind, by Sharon M. Draper. This inspiring book is about a girl who has Cerebral Palsy, a disability where she cannot move, or string together sentences. We make our way through her life, enjoying laughter (an overweight doctor named Mr. Hugely – ask your kids) empowerment, and pure wonder, as this girl functions at a public school! We cannot wait to see what happens next! -Camdyn and Bailey
Social Studies
This week we worked in our unit on World Lakes and Great Lakes. Some of the world lakes we’ve studies are: The Aral Sea, which is shrinking fast. The Caspian Sea is one of the few salt water lakes. We also learned about Lake Baikal. It is the deepest lake in the world. It was fun learning about these lakes. It was the most fun we’ve had in a long, long time. -Madi, Alli, and Grace
On Friday we learned about Georgia O’Keefe. Georgia O’Keefe was a famous artist who painted many famous paintings. We painted one of her paintings of Lake George, to go along with our Social Studies unit on Lakes. We painted it by using some mixed colors, such as white and blue, to create the light colored sky and clouds. Then for the mountains, we used yellow, brown and red. – Connor and Alana
Art
The students continued working on their Fence Post Portraits. They learned how to transfer their drawings by rubbing pastel on the back of their sketches, and then placing the sketch on top of the wood. The students used acrylic paint to add color, and we’ll need another week to finish these fabulous fence portraits!
We began working with our readers this week. We have a new method for the readers this year. We will work with our readers as a whole group, reading through them together, identifying certain grammatical aspects as well as key vocabulary. This week students received their first reader of the year. We went through the reader, identifying all cognados/ cognates (words that look very similar in both English and Spanish). This is a great way for the students to realize they are already familiar with a large portion of the vocabulary in each book. Students will have an assignment to accompany each reader we have. They will write the due date for these assignments in their planners. This week’s assignment was to list cognates from the story, as well as proper and common nouns.
Spelling/ ortografia
Students did a fantastic job on their spelling test! I have explained to them that accents count! Words will be marked wrong if they are missing an accent. (One student asked if words would be marked wrong if they didn’t require an accent but one was written. The answer is YES. Otherwise, students would put an accent on every word…)
This week we introduced the cursive letters i and t. Sometimes students who struggle with printing find they are better able to control their fine motor skills in cursive writing. Why cursive writing? One thought is students won’t be able to read old texts if they are not able to decipher cursive writing.
Math
We worked on expanded form / la forma desarollada and idenitfiying the value of digits within a larger number. One activity we did was to roll dice and write the expanded form of the number. We also took this opportunity to work on identifying the greatest number possible and the lowest number possible.
5,433 > 3,345 would read: cinco mil, cuatro cientos treinta y tres es mayor que tres mil, tres cientos cuarenta y cinco.
We also used our base ten blocks to form large numbers and then compared with our peers.
This week the students were introduced to Quick Tables on ALEKS. This will allow them to practice their addition and subtraction drills as well as their multiplication and division drills (later in the year). Quick Tables is only available for a limited amount of time each day/week. We want to encourage the students to drill but also to work within their ALEKS pie.
Students brought home Math Unit 1 workbook pages. They worked on these in class when they finished other work and in small group instruction. This year our math workbooks are in English so parents are better able to support and reinforce concepts at home. English math homework will also help students to be familiar with math vocabulary in both languages. These workbook pages are homework. Unit 1 is due Monday.
Social Studies
We are finishing up our Geography unit this week. We watched a short video about land forms, wrote definitions, and identified some land forms on a map. The class continued to add features to our living map, we now have a map key. Thank you to those students who offered to add important land forms to the map that we didn’t include the first time around. It makes my heart joyful to see that we have a class filled with students who seek out extra activities to enhance their learning. On Friday we had fun creating topographical maps with clay. These illustrated a variety of the types of land forms that we have learned about thus far.
Science
This week in science we focused on the vertebrate class of fish. We read about their typical characteristics and discussed pattern breakers, such as the African Lung fish. The students were thrilled to welcome a new member to class, our baby Beta fish now named Crystal. We will have fun watching her grow and observing her fish characteristics, some of the students have already noted her gills and scales by examining her through a magnifying glass. We also learned a new song this week about taxonomy and we are already thinking this one may have to go into the Spring Program. This week we got to go to the computer lab and library to work on our animal poem research. Students were looking for information that would help them come up with a list of descriptive words about their animal. While in the library I am also encouraging everyone to find a chapter book that they can keep in the class to read when they finish their work early.
English Spelling
Our second week of spelling went well. I think everyone has a pretty good understanding of my expectations for the sort activities. The students continue to sort their words daily while I move around the classroom checking and working with students who are needing extra help. On Thursday we practiced for our spelling test by doing partner quizzing and on Friday we took our first spelling test. Please remember that though I am only testing the students on 10 random words from their list, they are still responsible for knowing how to spell all of their words.
Art
The Second and Third graders completed their Cave Painting project in art this week. The students learned how to mix a variety of brown colors by using red, yellow, and blue. Then they used pieces of bark instead of paint brushes to apply the paint. This was quite challenging, but the students all did a great job. Be sure to check out these wonderful cave paintings on the bulletin board near the water fountain!
Character Education
We continued our discussion of bucket filling, the use of complements to demonstrate kindness, and practiced cooperative activities upon entering the classroom.
We began our book: The Hundred Dresses. This book has great examples of kindness, how we treat people, as well as examples of judgements we make without realizing it. We will incorporate some drawing activities with this as well, as drawing plays a key role in the storyline.
Art
began our unit on early world civilizations. The class began by finding the area known as Mesopotamia on the world map and identifying it as part of Asia. We discussed the importance of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and how they were important for trade and farming. We also talked about how the use of canals were important for bringing water to everyone as the development of crowded cities near the rivers, such as Babylon, made it more difficult to get direct access to the water. We learned about the wedge shaped symbols pressed into clay tablets called cuneiform, the Mesopotamian form of writing.
cara del canguo was a great activity to practice our gluing skills. (This is not as simple or easy as it sounds!!) We talked about how many eyes, ears, and noses each face should have and where each part should be placed.
