Another Week of 1st Quarter!

It's hard to believe that 1st quarter is almost coming to an end.  Last week the children got to meet their buddies in Ms. Alejandro's fourth grade class.  They were so excited to share a four-corners card they made to introduce themselves to their buddy.  They decorated an index card's four corners with four of their favorite things (color, food, animal, and thing about Ho`okele).  Their buddy did the same.  It was wonderful to see the children interact with the fourth graders.  

Here is a summary of what happened in our classroom:

​In Langauge Arts...

• Response to Intervention (RTI) started this week.  Basically, this is class time devoted to small-group instruction and also for differentiated and targeted instruction for students' various needs.  
• Using our Wonders curriculum, this week students read expository text.  Our essential question was How do Families Work Together?  Using text from Wonders, we read about two families, the Yung Family and the Gelder Family.  In the Yung Household, both parents have jobs and both the children and parents pitch in with chores around the house.  The Gelders owns a family farm, so their routines are very different, however, both families work together to get things done.  As two separate activities, students created tree maps for both stories to classify the jobs or chores each member of the family does.  Later using these maps, students used Q.A.D.E. to answer the following constructed-response questions: How does the Yung family work together?  How does the Gelder Family work together?   
• In writing, students finished their flow maps and have begun to draft their writing.  They are finding out how their flow maps are really helping them with the organization process!  In Writing Workshop, we worked on the trait of Organization.  After hearing and discussing the value of different types of transition words, the children went back to included appropriate transitions in their flow maps, such as first of all, next, secondly, last of all, finally, etc...
• Thus far in quarter 1, our read-aloud selection included the following chapter books: The War with Grandpa by Robert Kimmel Smith (which the children really enjoyed because of the humor, the wit, and the suspense!!!), I am Harriet Tubman by Grace Norwich (which was not only very informative and gave students a lot of background knowledge of American history and the tireless work to create a better America, but was also very inspirational for us all).  We are working on our next chapter book... The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner.  This is a very special story to me.  I shared with the students a personal story this week of myself as an early reader.  I was in 2nd grade and I use to tell my dad I hated to read and I wasn't good at it.  One day my teacher gave me a book order and I begged my dad to buy me a fuzzy diary with matching animal pen and that was all I wanted.  My dad insisted that he also buy a book since it's a book order.  He chose for me The Boxcar Children #1.  I was pretty much forced to read it.  But I soon discovered I loved it!  Later on in life, I also discovered something else very important, and this I shared with the children as well...children don't hate to read and it's not that they're not good at it...it's that they just haven't found the right books yet.  For me it was The Boxcar Children.  These books did it for me.  I got hooked!  Encourage your children to explore different genres until they find the right fit! 

In math...

• Students were introduced to three-digit numbers with internal 0 and teens.  They first represented these numbers using the most concrete method with base-10 blocks.  In this way students could physically touch and manipulate the number.  Next, they represented these numbers using more abstract methods like base-ten pictures, then finally using symbols like numbers, digits, and representing the number in various ways such as expanded form, number name, and place value. 
• Students explored the relative position of three-digit numbers on a number line.  Then they explored the concept of a thousand.  We will be continuing this through the next week.  

REMINDERS AND ANNOUCEMENTS

• I will be at a training Monday and Tuesday 9/25-9/26.  Mrs. Uson will be the substitute.  I have a full day of learning planned for the children.    
• Parent/Teacher Conference Forms went home the other week.  They were due on Thursday.  If you have not turned them in to me or a sibling's teacher, you must do so on Monday.  If you need a new form, let me know and I can get on Monday.  Teachers will be meeting on Wednesday to schedule conferences for students who have siblings and afterwards children with no siblings will be scheduled.  Thank you for you cooperation.  Forms are needed to do so.