Week of February 27th - March 2nd

Happy Birthday Dr. Suess!


Green eggs and ham anyone?
One fish, two fish, red fish blue fish! Thanks Mrs. O'Keefe for making the yummy jello treat with red fish. It was a big hit.

It was another fun-filled week of learning in room 306. We were excited to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday by enjoying several of his books along with classroom activities to extend book ideas into learning.

Because we decided to not use the headphones this week (to prevent spread of lice), Claire read the class Green Eggs and Ham. She had practiced it and was completely fluent! We followed it with our response to the story.

Word Study:
We revisited rhyming and looked at a few nursery rhymes including Jack and Jill. It’s amazing how much vocabulary learning can come from one nursery rhyme! This also went along perfectly with Dr. Suess rhymes throughout the week. This was then connected to word families. For the past two weeks we’ve had word family work at our magnetic work station and more than a handful of my students are struggling with the concept. I reviewed it with them and some of you may notice from the cat in the hat page sent home that your child still has difficulty.



Reader’s Workshop:
We focused heavily on retelling stories. This is still difficult for some, yet very important for good comprehension. Students are learning to retell using words from the story, retell in sequential order and using the characters names.

Writer’s Workshop:
We have worked extremely hard on writing narrative pieces. Many lessons were spent trying to illustrate what a good narrative text sounds like. We worked with several student sample pieces throughout the week (using the projector) and helped students change (revise) parts of their stories to make it more interesting and stretch the important moments. Still some students tend to write stories such as “I went to grandma’s house. We played a game. We ate dinner and then went to bed.” With a piece like this we try to stretch the game part. For example I might model a revision like this... First we try to add some setting with “Last week I went to my grandma’s house. We played Chutes and Ladders. At first, I was winning and laughing. Grandma kept trying to pass me, but she just couldn’t. Soon, I landed on a long, long chute which caused me to lose the game. I hope I have the chance to beat her next time. “ We’re trying hard to take out the “I went home” or “I went to bed” parts. Students are learning that they can end a story without it being the end of the day.
Our students are also working on word choices and trying to revise parts to sound more like story language words. For example rather than using “Then I…” it could be “Finally… or Soon…or Suddenly…”
Towards the end of the week you will be getting a folder containing your child’s narrative writing unit. Please take time to review this work with him/her giving lots of praise for efforts and achievement. You may also find that your child has many unfinished pieces or simply not a lot of work. This unit has been continuous since returning from break in January. Some pieces may be in stapled books or on writing pages (children get to choose this on their own).

Math:
First, we reviewed our Top-it game along with sequencing numbers.

Students are learning about money. We worked on the penny again and introduced the nickel. Though most can tell me that a penny is worth 1 cent and a nickel is worth 5 cents, they don’t completely understand that 5 pennies is the same as 1 nickel. We will continue to learn this concept as we add the dime and quarter eventually. Currently we play a game with nickels and pennies using dice…children roll and pull out number of pennies on die and shout out trade when they have 5 pennies to trade for a nickel. Child with most nickels when nickels are gone is the winner.

I introduced number stories and sentences this week. This also is a hard concept for some. We made up number stories such as “I had 3 marbles and my brother gave me 4 more. How many marbles do I have now?” The hard part seemed to be writing a number sentence to match (3+4=7). I’ve included examples of students’ stories & sentences. Finally, we worked on sorting, patterning and writing tally marks with colored goldfish to go along with Dr. Suess’s One Fish, Two Fish…






Big News for room 306...Our technology grant from Donorschoose.org was completed with the help of families from room 306 and anonymous donors from around the country including Hawaii. We received 3 new iPod touches in the mail on Friday!! Unfortunately, the cases were not shipped with them. While I wait for the cases to arrive I'll work on finding and loading educational apps for the children. I can't wait to see them use these!


Even bigger news for room 306...We have a new student teacher starting with us tomorrow, Monday. Her name is Ms. Mossoian. She has just completed a teaching rotation from second grade and we're excited to have her join our classroom community. The children met her previously, as she has popped in and out over the past two months. She will be with us for 8 weeks. Beginning next week, Monday March 12th I've asked for parent volunteers to step back from volunteering in our classroom. I appreciate your support and am confident this will be a positive experience for your child.

Friday night our student council representatives, Kathryn and Anday, had the opportunity to sing the national anthem at the Whaler's game in Plymouth. It was an exciting evening for them and the Whalers as they won in an overtime game closing with a shoot out.


In case you've noticed a decrease in photos or quality of photos please be patient with me as my camera broke on Valentine's Day. I am using my iPhone for all photos and I haven't figured out certain features. I had many more photos of student work but couldn't get the photos to rotate properly to display here. I do try to vary the children's photos and work samples, but am more limited at this time.

Upcoming event:
Tuesday, March 6th: NO SCHOOL, teacher in-service day (professional learning/workshop)

Photos of our Dr. Suess celebration with our 5th grade buddies:

Personalize your own photo slideshow