Mystery Reader #7

Our 7th Mystery Reader came to visit our classroom last week to read Knuffle Bunny (1 and 2!). Mrs. Anderson (Will's mom) is also a classroom teacher but was able to get into our classroom to read for a bit! The students loved the stories and illustrations by Mo Willems. Unfortunately I forgot my camera on the day she came to read to us. Thank you so much for coming to read to us Mrs. Anderson! We loved having you!

Words Their Way

Students have learned how to do word hunts based on their sorts for the week. We completed a "hunt" together during some morning messages. Students would hunt for words with their features for the week and then I highlighted those specific features within the words. They were then sent off with their book bags to read and find words with their feature and record in their Words Their Way books. We will do this each week as part of a Words Their Way routine. Students did a great job. They are also doing a nice job at buddy sorting!

Mystery Reader #6 and Happy Thanksgiving!

The Friday before Thanksgiving we had our sixth Mystery Reader, Mr. Spencer! He visited us on hat day to read a book written in poem form, "November". The students loved it. Thank you Mr. Spencer! Come read to us anytime!


We had our Thanksgiving feast last Tuesday and the kids had a lot of fun eating in the cafeteria with teachers, principals and parents. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with their families!

Lots of Learning!

Hi everyone! I can't believe we are nearing the end of November. Phewwww, we have been doing a lot of learning! In Reader's Workshop we have finished up our unit (though lessons will continue to be reinforced all year) on building our fluency. Students have learned many strategies such as paying attention to the punctuation, reading like a story-teller, thinking about the meaning of the sentence or story, chunking text together, and more! They continue to read and build that stamina both independently and with buddies. I am truly impressed and proud of their love of reading.

In Math we have finished up unit 2 and began unit 3. Students continue to count coin combinations (pennies and nickels and soon dimes), create and extend patterns, solve simple number stories using various strategies, learn about patterns on the number grid, and much more.


In Writing Workshop we began our unit, Small Moments. In this unit the students are encouraged to think about small moments/experiences in their lives to write about, adding a lot of interesting details. Students have listened to great stories where I have focused on the "small moment" and have looked/listened for all the details that the author included just in that small moment. Students are learning that big stories are "watermelon stories" and are encouraged to look inside that watermelon and pick a "seed" story. An example of a watermelon story would be "My Birthday Party". An example of a seed story would be "My Birthday Cake".

Students have been given plastic boxes for their WTW sorts. They seem to love these. They hold their sort cards perfectly. These are stored in the Word Work station and when they are in this station they may opt to grab their box and sort. This is optional in the Word Work station as they work with their sorts each day in a separate time.


In Science the students are learning about the different animal groups and what animals need to survive. In Social Studies they are learning about neighborhoods. They also practiced searching in atlases and learned that an atlas is a book of maps.


We are working on nouns and verbs in class. Ask your child to name the different types of nouns!

Veterans Day!

In honor of Veterans Day we discussed the meaning of this holiday, created a class chart to list characteristics of soldiers, worked with partners to fill in a soldiers bubble map, and then created individual soldiers to line our hallways. Each soldier states one thing that "Soldiers are...". (Soldiers are heroes.)

Happy Birthday this month to Lee-Ann, Collin and Conor!

Words Their Way

Next week I will begin to send home words from our Words Their Way sorts. We have done whole class routine practice the past few weeks. The students are given words/pictures and we have learned how to sort them according to how they sound (focusing on rhyming and word families these weeks), we've practiced various sorts like blind and buddy, and we have also done some word hunts where students "hunt" for their words in reading material. Next week I will send home a copy of the word sorts that your child is practing in class. I will also send home an outline of the week and what your child should do at home with the sorts. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

Please make sure your child returns their reading books in their reading packs each day. I recently purchased several leveled books for my own leveled library to send home and would appreciate your care with them. Thank you!

Students are working hard at learning to read with fluency in Reading Workshop. They are learning to attend to the punctuation and have been practicing that with buddies and during their read to self time.

Our 5th mystery reader was Mrs. Burrey (Eliza's mom). Thanks for coming in and reading to us!!! Eliza was so excited when she saw it was you as she had a pretty good hunch given the clues!

Literacy Centers

During my literacy center time the students work in two different stations a day. So far we are working in the following stations: Read to Self, Word Work, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone.

In Read to Self the students read from their book bags. Their bags contain "just right books" (those that come home for homework) and interest books. The interest books are books that they have self selected from my classroom library that are not at their reading level. Many students use this opportunity to choose nonfiction books on animals or weather, etc. During this time they read in a quiet spot for about 20 minutes. Sometimes they will look for words in their books like word family words or sight words, but they are just reading independently here.


Work on Writing is the station that allows the students to write for different purposes. They can write lists, label pictures, write friendly letters (including the parts to a friendly letter), write stories on fun theme paper or respond to various writing prompts. In this station there is a set of colored drawers and each drawer has different kinds of paper to take depending on what they want to work on.



Word Work is a station where the students usually start off doing their sorts (Words Their Way). Then they can choose activities in the colored drawers to work on for the remaining time. They can read the room and find specific words (four letter words, words that begin with certain letters, etc), build sight words with magnetic letters, use dry erase boards to write words/sentences, do sentence scrambles, stamp sight words, play word games, rainbow word wall writing, and more. These drawers will change out throughout the year.



Read to Someone is a station that includes big books. In this station the children read to/with buddies and look for and highlight sight words or word family words. They practice choral reading together, building fluency.

Happy Birthday to Madison on Sunday 10/30!!!

Mystery Reader #4 and Big Friends!

Last week we had our fourth Mystery Reader and he is quite important! We were visited by our very own superintendant, Dr. Maestas!! The students worked had at inferring who it could be and we did have some guesses that it might be him. The bike clue helped because they remembered his Dreamride this summer! The students were excited to have Dr. Maestas read a fun Halloween story to them and asked some questions about his job like "Do you put cameras in all the classrooms?" and "What do you do for your job as superintendant?". Dr. Maestas said he is working on something great and will come back this year to deliver a present to our class. We can't wait! Thank you, Dr. Maestas!


We also had our Big Friends visit us this same day to help us put together our spider hats to end our spider mini unit! The kids had a blast working on measuring how many cubes long one spider leg is and creating their spider hats. Here are a few pictures.

Survey!

For a short time I am taking a little poll. It's on the right hand side of this page. Please answer the question for me. Thank you!!

Spiders!

This week the students were so engaged in their spider learning! Students recorded their schema first using clipboards and then we added to our anchor chart.

We also learned about fact vs. opinion this week and applied it to our spider unit. Students then had to write their own fact and opinion about the creepy creature. We also did a quick directed drawing activity that turned out adorable.


Ask your children what they can tell you about spiders!