2nd/3rd: Sept 18

Math –

This week, Ms. Andrea’s math group worked hard writing, reading, ordering and comparing numbers in the hundreds & thousands. We learned two new games and embraced a small group cooperative challenge that required us to sort and compare digits.

Ms. Kelly’s math group loves being the teacher! Every day we warm up our math brains with a math challenge that the kids take ownership over, writing and talking through what they are doing on the board while the other kids watch or assist. Then we are ready to jump into the work! This week we practiced rounding numbers to both the tens and hundreds place- all the way up to the 100 thousands! We also had a great discussion about why we round and how it can be helpful in real life!

Literacy –

We began, and completed, something new in writing this week! Poems for two voices! What’s that? Well, Two-Voice Poems are written from two different points of view on the same topic. Our topic of course, is minibeasts! This kind of non-rhyming poem is designed to be read by two people, so we partnered up and began brainstorming ideas on a Venn diagram. Once we had several similarities and differences about our minibeasts, we began to form them into a poem! Using a graphic organizer with three columns, we created the two separate voices on the left and right, and in the middle we wrote the similarities that are read together. They are adorable y’all! Can’t wait for you to read them! We will have the kids practice reading their poems next week and post videos of the partners reading their masterpieces.

And of course there has been plenty of reading along with a focus this week on plot and inferencing, as well as building and expanding sentences.

Theme –

This week we explored the lovely ladybug up close thanks to Oak and his family for bringing in cute little ladybug larva! The larvae are already in their pupa stage. We can’t wait to see them emerge! 🐞

We also performed many experiments on roly polies! (No roly polies were injured!) Do they prefer light to dark? Will they crawl over or under something soft? Do they prefer apples or carrots? – And like all good scientists, we jotted down their discoveries. We also tested to see what they preferred- water, salt, sugar or vinegar. We placed a small amount of each, diluted, onto a piece of coffee filter and watched where the little guys gravitated toward. Most seemed to enjoy the water and sugar water!

And we are FINALLY utilizing all the newspapers brought in and have started making our giant insects! This week we created a form (a head, thorax and abdomen) and next week we will add the paper mache, so start saving those newspapers again!!!