A Great Start!

What an amazing (and BUSY!) first week we had in school!  It was an exciting week getting to know the children of D103 (who I am enjoying immensely by the way), setting up routines, and creating a safe and open environment where the children will grow and learn this school year. 
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Here is a summary of what happened in our classroom:
Getting to Know Each Other…
To build inclusion and practice communication and listening skills, students created paper T-shirt designs that represented themselves.  Their paper shirts were divided into sections to include topics such as family, favorite place, favorite food, etc...  Students could share their shirts with the class as others listened and learned about their new classmates.  

To showcase their birthdays, students designed their own cupcake using construction paper.  Which is now on display!

This week's goal was to build a strong community and foster our Tribal Agreements.  Each day we focussed on one tribal agreement, and with the help of some great children's literature, we discussed in detail what each agreement looks like, sounds like and feels like.  ​​

The children in Miss Nelson class from the story Miss Nelson is Missing taught us important lessons about mutual respect and attentive listening.  We read another story called My Mouth is a Volcano!  In this story we learn about interrupting others and why we should never do it (unless there's an emergency).  Using both stories, students brainstormed many ways to show attentive listening in our own classroom!

At the end of the week, as a culminating activity, we created our class "Recipe for Success" using the Tribal Agreements discussed earlier in the week and a few others that make a successful student.  Students enjoyed mixing different "ingredients" that symbolized the different traits of a successful student.  I hope they shared their recipe for success with you!  Because success is always better when shared!

​In Langauge Arts...
Students listened to many stories this week.  One in particular,  an Aesop fable, The Lion and the Mouse was used to help students practice visualizing as they read.  As students were read the story, they were asked to make a "mental movie" of various scenes in their minds. Using this story, student discussed a very important life lesson:  No matter if you're big or small, you can make a difference!  

Without looking at any illustrations, students used their visualization strategy to really listen to the story I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll.  Halfway into the story, students had to illustrate one scene from their mental movie.  This particular story included rich vocabulary and word choice, so it lent itself well to visualizing the details.  Students got to share their monsters.  Then we read the story looking at the illustrations in the book.  It was really cool to compare students' interpretations!  

After reading a picture book called Wolf! by Beeky Bloom, about a wolf who struggled to learn to read but never gave up and eventually became the best reader in his town, students wrote down what they think good readers do.  We later made a circle map with all our ideas.  This map is now decorating our classroom, as there are many wonderful ideas that we never want to forget like...Good Readers...

• reread the story if it does not make sense
• focus on their mental movie
• never give up when the words get hard
• ask for help
• sound out words
• stop and check
• read everyday! 
• use picture clues, etc... 
• Share their reading and books with others

In math...
Using our Stepping Stones curriculum, students started to learn about place value, specifically tens and ones.  They also practiced writing numerals and number names.  They are still working on adding in the hyphen when needed in number names.  Extending their knowledge of place value, students compared two-digit numbers and even ordered numbers from greatest to least or least to greatest.  

REMINDERS AND ANNOUCEMENTS

• Field trip is on Monday 8/12 (shoes and home lunch is needed)
• Don't forget to check and sign your child's planner daily!  Thank you!

• Please help your child log the genre he or she reads daily.  It is important to expose them to the correct genre name when referring to the books they read.  The Genre-at-a-Glance chart is located behind the reading log (laminated to the manilla folder).
• Use only the "learned words" for spelling homework.  Also the spelling of these words should be memorized, as they cannot be sounded out.  Students should read the words daily on the "Words to Read" sheet on the back of their reading log to familiarize themselves with the focused sound of the week.  Some of the words on the "Words to Read" sheet might be on the test.  So...students need to memorize the learned words (these words will be on the spelling test).  Students also need to learn the rule of the sound of the week.  An additional 6 phonetic words with the sound of the week will also be on the test for students to sound out. 
  

 

• And one last thought… most of my updates won’t be this long- there were just so many different activities that we did this week that I wanted to share! As a mom of two (one of them a 12-year-old boy who always has a hard time sharing what he does in school with me) this is what I hope for- a way to find out what goes on at school so an extension of learning at home can take place or simply engage in productive conversation at home.  It’s what I hope these updates will do for your family. ​