Math –
Ms. Andrea’s math crew reviewed some number sense concepts this week, focusing on odd and even numbers, finding patterns on the hundreds chart and filling in missing numbers on a number line.
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Ms. Kelly’s math group is working so hard and are becoming masters of place value with really BIG numbers- to the 100 thousands place- using base 10, expanded and word forms.
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Literacy –
The kids participate in many engaging activities on a daily basis, besides just reading, during Reading Workshop. For instance, we explicitly teach the kids the rules of the English language in order for them to decode bigger words they find challenging using games, manipulatives (like our movable letter boards) and paper/pencil work. It’s more than just a guessing game when it comes to figuring out an unknown word in a text, or spelling correctly, and we can teach the kids the “code”. Pulling back the curtain on the English language empowers the kids to take on more challenging text, and spell more difficult words on their own! We’re also beginning the year with a review of proper handwriting strokes in an effort to enhance readability of student work and ensure our kiddos are “starting from the top” when writing most of their letters.
In Writing Workshop, we are in the beginning stages of writing our first piece- a fictional story with minibeast characters! After reading and discussing a couple of books with bugs/insects as main characters, we created a list of possibilities for our own stories. We chose 2 critters and gave some thought to their traits, based on both physical characteristics and personality, and jotted down some ideas. We have also chosen possible settings for the story to take place in. The kids really enjoy sharing their ideas and it helps others who are a little unsure to hear what they have to say!
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Theme –
Our budding entomologists set off to do a little field work this week! Our crew’s first mission was to search for minibeasts and record what they found, how many body parts, legs and wings they have, and then decide if the creature was an insect or not an insect. We also explored all things cricket! After reading about them and learning some important new vocabulary, we filled out a diagram of alllll the cricket parts!
After learning all we could about crickets, we did an up close investigation, locating all the parts we just studied on the real deal! We let the little guys free in the fairy garden when we finished. We think they are very happy out there! We went out into the field again at the end of the week and each caught a specimen to bring back inside to study. The kids drew a detailed picture and wrote five descriptive words about their Minibeasts. Then they teamed up with another Beta entomologist that found a different critter, and using a Venn diagram, compared and contrasted the two bugs!
