Hi room 5 families! We can't believe September is almost over. We've been in school for one month now and have been working on class routines, writing about small moments, solving word problems, learning about artists and their style and meeting with everyday heroes. See what we have been up to below and read on for ways to support us at home. Here we are meeting with our 5th grade buddies to help them with their project on mind growth. First graders have a lot of knowledge to share about building grit! Parents can ask students, "What is grit?" "When do you use it?" "Why is it important?" We have been fortunate to spend time with some everyday heroes from our community. We have met with Officer Estrada a San Diego police office who has a sidekick named Atos. We've also met with a mom who is in the Navy. She works on a submarine. We've met with a nurse and a former Explorer alum who helps foster children. Parents can ask students: What makes these people everyday heroes? How do they help people? What tools do they use? Do they work on a team? Do they have a sidekick? In first grade we work on following the speaker during lessons and class discussions. The teacher is not always the speaker. Here we are practicing the 4 rules of listening: Eyes Watch, Ears Listen, Voice Quiet, Body Calm. Parents can ask, "How do the 4 rules help you follow the speaker?" We have high school buddies! Our buddies are from High Tech Media Arts and we meet on Friday mornings to help each practice reading. Here we are reading to our buddies. In math we are strengthening our number sense. Here we are working on the counting jar. We're finding ways to group numbers to help our counting be accurate and to look at numbers beyond groups of 1.
0 Comments
Week 3, done! We have been spending time building a classroom community, creating norms and reacquainting ourselves with classroom routines. See what we have been up to below. Read along to see what questions or activities you can do at home with your student. We have been spending time each day practicing choosing just-right-books. In room 5 we use the bike analogy to help students think about wha is a just-right-book. A just right book is like riding a bike on the blacktop at school. The reading sounds smooth, you might have 2 to 4 tricky words per page, but you still understand the book. A too hard (for now) book is like riding a bike up hill. The reading is slow, you have more than 5 tricky words per page and you are confused about what the sentence is telling you. A book that is too easy is like riding a bike down hill. You can read the book really quickly and there might be one tricky word. Just-right-books help students build upon their reading skills by challenging them at the right level. We reunited with our buddies who are now 5th graders! Mrs. Abdul-Alim is our buddy class teacher. Here were are reading with our friends. In math, we are working on solving word problems and representing our thinking in drawings and using number sentences (equations). Below we each created graphs to show data about things we are interested in learning more about. Some friends made graphs about favorite pizza, if you have a brother, sister or none or both, and favorite animal. Parents can support students at home by asking them "What does that data say about _______?" "What is the pattern?" "What does the pattern tell us?" Below we are doing a gallery walk to look at all the different questions that we can answer with a bar graph. We started writer's workshop this week and are so excited to write! We are learning about writing narratives and telling small moments. Small moments are things that we do or something that happened to us. For example, losing a tooth. It's not a big vacation or a party. We learn to stretch a small moment and add lots of details to help readers feel like that were there with us when it happened. This week in Art, we learned about Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian artist who painted abstract art. You might ask your child “What can you tell me about abstract art?” “What colors did Kandinsky primarily use?” What can you tell me about primary colors?” We have been working really hard on our portrait collages. We practiced using scissors and going over norms for using glue. Here they are! Parents can ask, " what what challenging about making the portraits?" What did you enjoy the most?"
|
AuthorWe are authors, writers, mathematicians, readers, scientists and artists. Mrs. Salamanca will email you to check our class blog when there are new updates. Archives
May 2019
Categories |