Week of April 30th-May 4th

Hello families,

While I'm happy to be blogging again, please know that the blogger website has completely changed its' format. Therefore this may not look pretty this week. Hopefully I will get the hang of it in the next few weeks.
It was a full and crazy week!  The children were all excited about our going away party for Ms. Mossoian, but sad to see her leave.  She was fortunate to have her first official subbing day on Friday in Mrs. Eklov’s room and many kept asking on when she would be back in our room. 
Thank you all for the wonderful support and generosity you had with our thank you and congratulatory gift for Ms. Mossoian.  She was quite emotional with her thanks and good byes.

We enjoyed a week with a new big book called Meanies this week.  We used the text to revisit and review the many reading strategies we learned throughout the year.  I used what we call a “cloze procedure” where I covered many of the words with sticky notes.  Students had to give a strategy and try it before I uncovered the words.   We also used this book to practice retelling for comprehension.  It was specified that all students should retell using characters’ names and sequential order.

Our word study was connected to the big book as well.  We worked with question words and punctuation.
Writer’s Workshop:  We are finishing up our poetry unit.  Oh my, we have some wonderful poets in our class.  I love this unit because children who might not normally enjoy writing feel more encouraged with writing smaller pieces with fewer rules such as complete sentences and periods.  It has been fun seeing the creativity from my students.  Throughout the week we worked on various poetry styles and reviewed the characteristics of poetry…rhythm, rhyme and repetition.  We also worked again with line breaks and worked with revising pieces.  Next week we will work on revising, editing and publishing our poetry.

Reader’s Workshop:  This week we reviewed and practiced using reading strategies together.  Again, I modeled this with big books and poems.  Additionally, students practiced giving reading partners prompts instead of telling the word for a partner.  This is a task that takes some maturity.  Most students want to jump in and give the word away, but having self-control and assisting a partner by saying a strategy such as “look at the picture and think about what would make sense” is a higher level skill.  We also had a mini-lesson on how readers think about the characters and events while reading.

Math: Again we worked with telling time.  Students enjoy practicing with the paper plate clocks they created.  We practiced the “o’clock and half-past (or :30).  We played a matching game with digital/analog clocks too.  We worked on basic addition/number concepts with “the story of 7”.  Students “played” with gems and rainbow mats learning the add ends of 7.  On Friday we practiced coin recognition with coin symbols on sticks.

Work stations: Writing about spring, roll and spell (3 letter cube game), letter/picture find A to Z, oral language picture/dice activity, fill and record hexagon with pattern blocks, making a flower diagram at the art center, finding 4 letter words with clipboards and more!

Many thanks to families who donated new books to our classroom through Dublin's book fair.  We have some lovely new titles.  Students were happy to read some already.

This Friday, May 11th Dublin is hosting a spring clean up evening.  We are looking for families to serve our community with work on the grounds of Dublin.  I unfortunately cannot attend, as I'll be out of town for my father's 70th birthday surprise.  I hope many of you can lend a hand to represent our classroom.  Thank you!

Finally, this Friday is also Dublin's Moms and muffins morning.  Hope to see many of you there to enjoy the morning with your child.  Dads are needed to help volunteer for the event.  This is an ongoing tradition here at Dublin.  Every other year we switch between "Dads and donuts" or "Moms and muffins".