Weekly Update, February 27 - March 2

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone enjoyed the long rodeo weekend! The kids were happy to be back and share stories about their rodeo adventures with each other.

It's the last few days of Love of Reading Month.  I am so proud of how hard the kids have worked!  There are a few fun activities planned for the week.  Each class will decorate their door based on a book/author.  Our class chose "The Icky Bug Book."  Congratulations to Sawyer for his winning idea for our door!  On Wednesday, there is story night in the library with Mr. Eddie at 6:00 pm.  Friday is school-wide pajama day!  We will have a school-wide read-in on the Forever Green in the afternoon.

This week in science, guided reading and writing we are learning about beautiful bugs! Each day we will learn about a different category of insects. Today we learned about the characteristics of beetles. The rest of the week we will learn about butterflies and moths and their life cycles, bees and wasps and how to tell the difference between them and flies, gnats and mosquitoes. The kids are really excited for this unit!

In writing we are working on poetry. Today the kids wrote a beetle acrostic poem on a picture of a beetle. These turned out SO cute! The kids will also write a "How To Be a Bee" poem and a "What Am I?" poem about a fly, gnat or mosquito. The kids really enjoy poetry writing! The kids will also get practice using a picture to guide their writing.

The kids' writing has really taken off over the last few weeks and it is SO exciting to see! We have done a lot of work with word choice (specifically explicit nouns and strong verbs) and, as always, conventions. It is great to see the kids use what they have learned in their writing. You may hear your child mention our "demands for writing." We have several demands for writing at this point in the year. We review them several times each day.

Our demands for writing:
1. Start each sentence with a capital letter.
2. Write all names and proper nouns with a capital letter.
3. End statement sentences with a period.
4. End question sentences with a question mark.
5. Use quotation marks to show when someone is talking.
6. ALWAYS use a finger space between your words!


And of course: always write your NAME and DATE!
Kids - you are doing a great job of remembering to meet all our demands each time you write! Parents - when you watch your child write, you can help your writer by asking him/her if he/she met the demands. It's most helpful to ask your child what the demands are and then see if he/she can correct it independently.

The kids came home with Rainbow Words and they are due tomorrow. In making words we are working on tricky homophones. We are reviewing homophones we have already learned and learning some new ones too.  This week (and for the rest of the year) there are 15 spelling words and a bonus word.  In addition to the spelling test on Friday, there will also be a dictation test where the kids will have to write a sentence that is dictated to them.  This is a great way to transfer their spelling/grammar skills to writing.

The kids enjoyed their creepy, crawly centers today! The centers for the week include:
1. Listening - The kids listened to Beautiful Bugs and then they made a Venn Diagram to compare Wood ants and Monarch butterflies.
2. Science - The kids looked at several dozen different (plastic!) bugs and categorized them. The kids made their own decisions about what categories to put the bugs in.
3. Writing - The kids looked at bug books. They picked their favorite bug from the book, drew a picture of it and then wrote an adventure about it.
4. Math - The kids made bugs out of pattern blocks. Each child took a turn playing teacher; that child made a bug and then he/she taught the other kids how to make the bug.  They are also practicing bug addition by adding 3 numbers.
5. Writing - The kids made words out of different bug word chunks.

In math we are continuing to practice measurement using rulers with inches and centimeters. We will also learn how to use different tools to measure weight. 

We are back into the routine of timed tests.  The kids are doing well with these.  This is a skill that is easy to practice at home too.

We have a fun activity planned for computers this week. If you'd like to see what the kids will do, check back on Friday for the blog posting called, “Computers, 3/2.”

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston