Weekly News (Oct. 11-14)

Wow! These two short weeks have flown by! Take a peek below to see what we have been learning in K-2.

Math
The children were introduced to the concept of a "Ten Frame." (see example below) The format of the ten frame helps children develop a good number sense. For children and adults, it is easy to immediately recognize quantities less than 5, however, recognizing quantities beyond 5 is more difficult. The ten-frame helps students visualize the numbers between 5 and 10. To represent numbers, the children fill the top row of the ten-frame with objects from left to right before filling the bottom row to promote recognition of "5 and some more" patterns. For example, the ten-frame below represents the number 7-- 5 plus 2 more.

We also reviewed our shapes and used tangram pieces to make shape puzzles. By rearranging and rotating our collection of 7 shapes, we were able to make new shapes like the ones below. We went on a shape hunt in our classroom too!

To wrap up our first unit in math, we went on a "Number Hunt" throughout our classroom and around the building. Check out our findings below!

Jolly Phonics
It's amazing to see how well the students are doing labeling their pictures in their Jolly Phonics notebooks. I can tell many of the students are practicing their sounds. Keep up the great work K-2! We learned several new sounds over the last two weeks including:

Gg as in "goat"
Oo as in "on
Uu as in "umbrella"
Ll as in "leaf"
Ff as in "fish"
Bb as in "balloon"

Literacy
Reading Workshop
The students learned the following phrases during reading workshop time to help them keep their conversations going during turn-and-talk time. 

"I think...because..."

"I notice..."

"I agree with you because..."

I disagree with you because..."

We also learned another skill that strong readers use--they read books over and over again, especially their favorites! This helps build reading fluency and confidence. 

We also learned how to take care of the books in our classroom library. We practiced holding our books with two hands while carefully looking through our book bins, turning the pages at the top right corner, and returning the books to our bins right side up with the covers facing forward. The students learned how to choose books from our library too by using the following three steps: 

Writing Workshop
Our writers have been busy during writing workshop time. We have been reviewing our workshop routines and taking a closer look at the 4 steps that writers use to record their ideas.

We spent some time talking about how writers think of their ideas, and we learned that good writers answer the following questions when telling a story: Who? What? When? and Where? While reading I Broke My Trunk by Mo Willems, we were able to see how Mo Willems answers these questions as he tells us the story of how Gerald broke his trunk. Then we practiced thinking about these questions as we shared our own "ouch" stories. 

Guest Reader
The class loved the story Dominick's mom shared with us during his "All About Me" week--The Scrambled States of America.

Science
We have started collecting weather data as we prepare for our Tracking the Weather science unit. As part of this yearlong unit, we will collect information about the weather each day and then compare our data from season to season. Please click here to see our science page or click the "Science" button at the top of our blog.

Centers
Take a peek at some of our new centers!

Number Puzzles

Listening Center

Puzzles and teamwork!

Kitchen

Math center

Thanks for reading!

Have a great weekend!