Surprise...It's a fish!

We have been talking about pets this week.  We read books and had discussions about what pets are best for in our houses and at school.  We read the policy about having class pets.  We learned that students in the class can't be allergic, they have to be in cages or tanks at all times, we have to have a plan for vacations, and we have to have permission from the principal.  We narrowed down our choices to a snail or fish and took a vote.  The fish won!  We wrote a letter asking Mrs. Hill for permission including our plan for taking care of the fish and how we will use the fish to help us read and write.  We are waiting for her decision.  We also thought about what we NEEDED (water, food, and a tank) for a fish and what we WANTED (toys and rocks) for the fish. We have looked around the classroom and made a decision about where the best place for a tank would be (next to the sink and not in the cubbies or on the books in the classroom library).  We have also practiced walking calmly and safely around the room as we have been moving a little fast and furious lately.

In Readers Workshop, we have finished our unit on reading strategies and author's craft.  I feel like the students had made the most progress in this unit.  Things are really starting to click.  Your child brought a tool box home to teach you about the strategies they have learned.  They know that sometimes you need more than one strategy and sometimes a strategy won't work.  We have started a "Selfie Center" where  a student records his or her thinking about a book in a video on the i-Pad.  Then we watch the selfies and share what we like about them.

In math, we continue to work on the foundation of addition and subtraction.  We are using number bonds to record the whole and two parts of a number sentences.

Keep reading with your child each night, it really makes a difference in their reading ability and love of books!

April Fool's Day!

We just finished adding strategies to our reading tool box.  Our new readers are learning that they may need to try more than one strategy to figure out a word.  We are getting good at using new strategies and not just relying on the picture and first letter.

 When we try new strategies, we have to check to make sure the tricky word makes sense in the sentence.  Here are some questions we ask ourselves to fix up our thinking.

 We just started learning about Author's Craft and how writers add things to their writing to build it up and make it more interesting.

In math we are working on addition and subtraction.  We are solving word problems and number sentences using manipulatives and drawings.