Weekly News Feb 21-24

Brrr....where did that 70 degree weather go? I guess it's back to the reality of winter in Chicago. Take a peek to see what we have been learning in K-2!

All About Me
We loved learning all about Sophia this week and some of her favorite things! We learned that Sophia loves the color purple, and she enjoys collecting Beanie Boos. She likes to play with her "Live Pet" bird, and she had fun using her glow-in-the-dark wand on Halloween too. Sophia also likes to play catch and spend time with her family!

A big thank you to Sophia's mom for reading a Disney favorite!

Math

This week we took a closer look at two-dimensional shapes as we identified some of the similarities and differences between squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles. We also introduced the terms: corner, side, and angle. Students used these terms to describe and name each shape. We even rotated some of the shapes to see if that made a difference and quickly learned that the name of the shape and features stay the same even if we rotate it in different directions.

We also introduced the concept of subtraction this week. Using our interactive whiteboard, we practiced subtracting or "taking away" dragonflies from our jar while playing a game called "Fly, Fly Away!" We recorded our thinking using our mini whiteboards to write a number sentence such as 10 - 5 = 5.

Literacy
Reading Workshop
This week during reading workshop, we revisited the book How Bees Make Honey to help us learn strategies to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words. Using some of the strategies from our "S-T-O-P-I-T!" chart, we were able to better understand the meanings of the words--cells, mate, and nectar.

We also read the book Healthy Habits and learned how to identify key details that support the big idea of the text. While listening to the book, the students acted like detectives and used good thinking skills as they worked to figure out how all the facts fit together to support the big idea--keeping our bodies healthy everyday. After examining the table of contents, reading the headings, and thinking about the big idea, the students were able to identify the following habits we should do everyday to stay healthy:

1. Eat good foods like fruit, eggs, and nuts
2. Drink plenty of milk and water
3. Clean and protect our skin
4. Brush and floss our teeth
5. Play hard for exerices
6. Get lots of sleep

Writing Workshop
It was great to hear how the children spent their long weekend break as they worked on their weekly weekend writing response. They also practiced their informational writing skills by describing a toy they know a lot about!

Assessments
I have been working with students one-on-one over the past two weeks to gather some assessment information for report cards and conferences. It has been great to see how much progress the children have made! You may have noticed that your child has not brought home a new guided reading book the last two weeks, but books will start coming home again soon once I finish our assessments.

Handwriting
It's official! We have now completed all uppercase letters in our Handwriting Without Tears journals, and we will be moving onto lowercase letters next week!

Indoor Recess
With the rainy weather today, the children enjoyed some indoor recess time!

Teamwork at its finest!

Have a great weekend!

Thanks for reading!

Weekly News (Feb. 13-17)

Wow, what an exciting week of learning and celebrating! The children were excited to celebrate our 100th Day of School as well as Valentine's Day!

All About Me
We loved learning all about two of our kindergarten friends this week--Liliana and Kacper. As Liliana shared her "Me Bag," we learned that she loves building with her Lego Friends, and she enjoys coloring and doing crafts. She is also a big fan of the Disney princesses, and she loves spending time with her family!

We also loved learning all about Kacper this week. We learned that Kacper is a big fan of cars and trucks. He not only has a big collection of toy cars, he also enjoys reading car magazines. Kacper also enjoys spending time outdoors hiking and rock climbing. He is a big fan of nonfiction books, and he loves spending time with his family!

A big thank you to Kacper's Aunt Maggie for coming in to read Demolition. 
What a great story about reusing materials to make new and beautiful things!

100th Day of School
This week we focused on the number 100! We practiced counting by 1's and 10's. The children shared their bottle collections of 100 items and compared the volume of their collections. We also made hundreds day necklaces by stringing on different colored beads in groups of 10. We quickly realized we needed 10 groups of 10 to make a 100! We used our dot painters to make gumball machines with 100 gumballs, and we also worked in pairs to organize a collection of objects into a 10-by-10 array. Take a peek at our 100's Day slideshow below!

100th Day of School from Kathy Riesing on Vimeo.

Literacy
Reading Workshop
The class LOVED our mentor text this week-- I See a Kookaburra: Discovering Animal Habitats Around the World. While exploring unique animals hidden among six different habitats, we practiced how good readers ask questions while reading to help them learn!

Writing Workshop
In honor of our 100th day of school, the students wrote about what they would do if they were given $100. I was not only impressed with how well the children are progressing with their writing, I was also impressed with how many savers we have in our class!

The children continue to gain confidence in themselves as writers every week. They are working hard to match up letters with the sounds they hear, and they are working to include the following elements in their writing:

• Capital letter at the beginning of each sentence
• Spaces between words
• Lowercase letters throughout each sentence
• Period at the end of each sentence

World Read Aloud Day
We were so excited to welcome some of Ms. Quick's 2nd graders to our room to read aloud to our class. They read a book by one of our favorite authors--Thank You by Mo Willems. What a wonderful way to celebrate World Read Aloud Day!

Social Studies
In honor of Presidents' Day, we spent some time learning about our very first president--George Washington. We learned that George Washington was a boy who loved to learn math and ride horses. He learned how to make maps and later became a commander in the army. After leading his troops to victory during the American Revolution, he became the first President of the United States.

Coding in the LMC
This week in the LMC we explored our new Bee Bot robots that we received through a grant from the ABC/25 Foundation. The class did a great job learning how to program our robots to follow a series of commands. Our goal was to move our Bee Bot around our game board to reach some of our favorite picture books. Check us out in action below!

Bee Bots from Kathy Riesing on Vimeo.

Bee Bots 2 from Kathy Riesing on Vimeo.

Valentine's Day
A huge thank you to all of the parents that helped out with our Valentine's Day party. The class had a great time!

Valentine's Day 2017 from Kathy Riesing on Vimeo.

Weekly News (Feb. 6-10)

Take a peek below to see what we have been learning this week!

All About Me
This week we loved learning all about Katie. We learned that Katie loves to watch movies, especially her favorite movie--Frozen! She also loves to build Lego Friends and play with her Playmobil sets. She enjoys coloring and reading too. Katie also loves to play soccer and spend time with her family!

A big thank you to Katie's Dad for coming in to read today.
My New Teacher and Me!--What a fun book!

Math
This week in math we took a closer look at two-dimensional shapes as we identified some of the similarities and differences between squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles. We also introduced the terms: corner, side, and angle. We even used our bodies to make some 2-D shapes!

Triangle

Square

Rectangle

Trapezoid

Circle

We practiced our counting patterns too by playing a game called "Interrupted Counts" where students had to start counting from a given number and then stop when they were interrupted. Then they had to continue the count from a different number.

We practiced writing our numbers as well by playing a round of "Roll and Record" with two dice. This was a great way for students to practice finding sums and recording their rolls on a graph. Students used a variety of strategies to find their sums including: counting the dots, counting on, and pulling the combinations from memory. Students quickly realized why 0 and 1 were not represented on their graphs, and after recording several of their sums, many children realized that rolling a 6, 7, or 8 was more likely than rolling a 2 or a 12 because there are several ways to make a sum of 6, 7, or 8 and only one way to get a 2 or a 12!

Roll and Record

Literacy

Reading Workshop

This week during reading workshop, we used the book How Bees Make Honey to learn about nonfiction text features. We learned that readers read nonfiction text differently than fiction, and we also learned how authors of nonfiction texts use a variety of text features to organize information and help us understand what is important. After learning about these text features, the students selected their own nonfiction book and found two features to share with the class. They did an amazing job!

We also took a closer look at one of our nonfiction text features--photographs. We learned that nonfiction authors use photographs to show us how things look in our real lives and the details in photos help us understand the information in the text. We also learned that the photos and the words work together to teach us new information.

We learned about the genre of biography this week as well as we read Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell. As we read McDonnell's beautifully written and illustrated book about the young life of Jane Goodall, we learned that a biography is a nonfiction book written about the life of someone else.

Writing Workshop

We will be switching gears in the next few weeks with our writing as we work to tie our writing into our nonfiction reading unit. Students will be learning how to write and record information they are learning about real topics.

LMC
The class had some time this week to explore some of the math games we have been playing on the Everyday Math website. New login cards were sent home this week so you can access these games at home too. If you're having trouble logging on, you might want to try a different browser. We have had the best luck with Safari and Firefox!

Getting Ready for Valentine's Day

The class had a great time decorating bags for our upcoming Valentine's Day Party. They are looking forward to an exciting week!

Have a great weekend!

Thanks for reading!

Weekly News (Jan. 30-Feb. 3)

All About Me
This week we loved learning all about Ben and some of his favorite things! We learned that Ben is a huge Cubs fan, and he is an avid movie watcher. He likes watching Disney movies, and Finding Dory is one of his favorites! Ben also likes playing with cars and building with Legos. One of his favorite Lego sets is the Disney Castle with lots of Disney characters including Mickey and Minnie! We also learned that Ben enjoys painting and doing art projects, and he loves spending time with his family!

A huge thank you to Ben's mom for coming in to read a book from the book fair--
There's a Giraffe in My Soup--and then donating it to our class!
Thank you so much! It will go great with our fiction unit!

Math
This week in math we reviewed the concept of patterns while using pattern blocks to make and extend a given pattern. We also worked to create some of our patterns too. We also revisited the concept of addition and learned more about the plus sign. We practiced counting groups of objects and joining them together to find the sum or total number of objects. We learned that when you add objects together the total gets bigger. We also practiced writing number models to match our number stories and even made a class book of number stories. Take a peek at some of our work below!

Groundhog Day
In honor of Groundhog Day and as a math extension, we made predictions about whether or not Punxsutawney Phil would see his shadow on Groundhog Day. We graphed our predictions and then watched Phil as he came out of his hole to see if he saw his shadow. Looks like there will be six more weeks of winter!!

Literacy
Reading Workshop
This week we began our third unit of our Schoolwide literacy program, which focuses on the genre of nonfiction. Throughout this unit, the students will be studying three types of nonfiction--reference, biography, and literary nonfiction. Children's natural curiosity about the world around them will prompt students to ask question and learn about a variety of topics throughout our unit.

During our first lesson, we previewed all of our mentor texts and learned that nonfiction books teach us about real topics such as: people, sports, animals, events, holidays, transportation, and many other topics. We also looked at the front and back covers of each book, some of the photographs, and previewed the table of contents to understand some of the structures and features of nonfiction.

Then we read a nonfiction book about soccer and filled out a graphic organizer to help us identify what we think we know about soccer as well as what we want to know. Then while reading the book Soccer, we were able to confirm some of our ideas and clear up some of our misconceptions. Then we recorded our new learning and added even more questions!

The children were also thrilled to pick new books for their book boxes this week!

Writing Workshop
During writing workshop this week we read the book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats to help us understand how a personal narrative tells a story about a real moment from your life. We talked about how The Snowy Day was about one fun day in the snow, not about a whole winter season. Then we read a story called The Roller Coaster, which was about a little girl's first roller coaster ride. We used a watermelon as an analogy to help students understand that good personal narratives tell about one special moment in time--like the seed of a watermelon. Then we completed a sorting activity to help us understand the difference between "watermelon" stories and "seed" stories.

Guided Reading Groups
The students continue to do a great job during guided reading and are always eager to get a new book! They also continue to do a nice job working independently while I am working with a small group. During our group time, we work on a variety of early literacy skills, which are tailored to each group's literacy needs. In addition to reading our new book, we review sight words, reinforce letter sounds and patterns, and sometimes even squeeze in a little writing! Keep up the great work K-2!

Handwriting Practice
We continue to use the Handwriting Without Tears program to help us learn the strokes for writing each letter. We recently learned our "magic C" letters (C, O, Q, and G), which all begin with a big curve. We have 5 more capital letters to learn, and then we will be moving onto lowercase!

Global Day of Play
Click HERE to see some pictures from our Global Day of Play. The class had a blast playing with a variety of toys and activities, and they had some great reflections about why it is important to play at school including:

When you play, you learn how to share.

You can make new friends when you play.

It helps you learn how to take turns.

Sometimes you work hard all day and your brain needs a break.

It's good to have fun while you are learning.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Thanks for reading!