February Fun

READING: My students continue to impress me each day with the meaningful conversations they are having in their book clubs! I love the fact that they are all getting so into these chapter books and are independently practicing comprehension skills that we have been working on all year.  Each student has shown that they are a responsible member of their group by coming to book club prepared and ready to engage in great conversation. Along with our great work in the small group setting, students continue to complete independent daily 5 choices each day. Keyboarding is a choice that has been recently added and the class is having fun learning how to type in home row, use correct posture, and attempting words without looking at the keyboard! Typing Master can also be practiced at home. Please see the educational links tab to connect directly to the site. Thank you for your support with your child reading at home each night. I have noticed a big improvement in reading engagement from the beginning of the year until now!

WRITING:  Over the past few weeks, students have been practicing writing clear paragraphs with a strong opening sentence, supporting details, and a clear closing sentence. We wrote a 5 paragraph procedural writing piece as a class. Students chose something that they are an ‘expert at’ and wrote their own 5 paragraph procedural paper. Look for them in the hallway!

This week we will continue our practice with paragraphs, focusing on a favorite places writing piece. Students will choose a favorite place in or near the Seattle area. They will share a description of the place, details about what makes the place so wonderful, and who they recommend the place to. The audience for this writing is anyone new to our school. We will create a favorite places book to keep in our office. We will also send each students’ writing to the organization in which they write about.

MATH: You may have heard that we have started ‘math teams’ in our class! Each team represents one of our Seahawk players, and while each group meets with me every day, students also have a variety of math activities to support their learning throughout the week. We have all had fun with these. We are almost done with Unit 4. To end, we will continue to focus on addition and subtraction and their relation to one another. In our upcoming unit, students will continue to work with addition and subtraction, specifically analyzing different types of story problems. Students will solve tricky problems with too much information, multi-steps, or hidden information! Stay tuned for more information.

SOCIAL STUDIES: I am so excited about these upcoming heritage presentations! I have received great feedback from the kids, and it sounds like they are really enjoying talking with their family about their background.

In the coming weeks, students will compare and contrast their lives to students lives in countries around the world. We will also learn from one another’s heritage presentations. Last, students will take the trimester 2 assessment which covers lessons 4 (immigration), 5 (cultures), 7(diversity).

SCIENCE: The kids are excited to start our next science unit! To begin, we will explore Investigations 3 and 4 in our Foss Measurement Kit where kids will learn about measuring capacity and temperature. Students will determine the difference between a tool and a unit. After mid-winter break, students will participate in hands on STEM activities while designing and testing parachutes!

Upcoming Dates:

February 13^th: Valentine’s Day Party! 2:15-3:30

February 16-20: Mid-Winter Break-NO SCHOOL

February 26^th: Festival of Cultures