Under the “resources” tab is a link and pass code to our class’ scholastic account. Let’s get going on book orders! Ordering, waiting, and then receiving a new book in the mail is so exciting for kids-and great incentive to read! It also earns points for our classroom so that we can build our library even further.
Orders will be due on by the 5th of every month!
2. Reading Update:
We are finishing up our “Walk in your character’s shoes…” unit! We have featured the Kate DiCamillo book Tiger Rising as our book study. Students have been practicing using our skills to follow their characters in their independent books. We have been studying how fictional characters change over the course of a book, and have been collecting character traits on charts to track their changes.
3. Writing Unit Celebration:
We have completed our fiction writing unit and are excited to share our stories with you! Stories were inspired by Chris Van Allsburg’s book titled The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. Students worked on writing an engaging “hook” to suck readers in to their stories! We also focused on writing a beginning, middle, and end, and writing with voice and descriptive details. Writing endings proved to be challenging as some kids wanted to leave a little suspense at the end! We discussed strategies and shared ideas and the kids did a fantastic job. Look forward to watching or listening to videos of the kids reading their own stories posted on their E-Folios!
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4. Math Update:
We are wrapping up our unit that has introduced the operations of multiplication and division. Although the unit is coming to an end, this is a math topic we will continue to work on throught the year, and study in unit 3! While we focused on a more foundational understanding of these operations’ concepts, students will now focus on building automaticity with fact recall, and being able to solve more complex, multi-step problems.
To help at home, make practicing multiplication facts part of your homework routine. There are many online programs and games that support fact automaticity! Access these sites through our library resource tab. You tube has some great songs and videos for memorization of facts. Oh-old fashioned flash cards are great, as well! Here is a great website discovered by Lara Francisco:
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5. Project Based Learning: Community
We continue to work away slowly at finishing our School Rules videos! Thank you to Sara Curcuruto for her huge time commitment, and patients, as the kids use an online Voicethread program to produce and narrate their videos!
We have now begun our second phase of the community unit. Students are designing their own community service projects! We are still in the early stages, but our goal is to see our projects carried out by the holiday break! We will be needing a lot of volunteer support to help manage as there are 4 groups each doing very different projects. I will let you know when, and how you can help soon!
The groups are:
A. Dwankhozi Hope Group: We are in contact with the organization and have found out what we can do to be helpful. Check out their email to us on the PBL page! We are planning for fundraiser (bakesale?) and also to become penpals! Visit the Dwankhozi Hope website to learn more about their mission!
dwankhozi-hope.org/
B. Project Read: These students have chosen to serve our community through reading! Our idea is to visit a retirement community and to read to the elderly. We are still looking for a place to make this happen, if you have any ideas please contact me!
C. Cistic Fibrosis Stairclimb Group: This group will support classmate Emma Jefferson and her family’s team for the CF Stairclimb in December! We are planning on making the team care packages to help them do their best on the day of the rigorous stairclimb!
D. Holiday Care & Relief: We have a couple kids who have family and friends in New York who have been hit hard by the recent Hurricane Sandy. We are finding out what they are in need of, and collecting items to send over. This will be a drive and we will let you know what you can donate soon!
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6. Field Trip Friday:
On Friday, will be heading to the Seattle Children's Theater for the presentation of "Danny, King of the Basement." We will be leaving FIRST THING in the morning! Please arrive on time, or early to school on Friday! We had to take this early bus in order to make it to the theater on time :) Visit the Theater's website to read all about this great play: http://www.sct.org/Shows/On-Stage/Danny