Welcome, Spring!

 It may not feel like spring outside yet, but it sure does in our classroom thanks to the beautiful flowers the children made.  We made these flowers on Friday as part of our math time. We learned that there are many different ways to make ten.  Students worked with ten cubes to find different combinations that make ten.  Students wrote addition number models equalling ten on the petals of their flowers.

This week during Math we also:

• practiced skip-counting and looking for patterns using individual number grids.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• learned a new game, The Raft Game, to help us learn about trading/exchanging. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• practiced estimating.
• practiced solving addition and subtraction number stories and writing number models to show our stories.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

This week during Reading Workshop we:

• learned the word "have" and added it to our word wall.
• reviewed that when readers use pictures to help them figure out a word, sometimes the clue might not be on the surface of the picture.  Readers need to look deeper and think about the whole picture and what is going on.
• learned to pay attention to the end of words and sorted pictures by the sound they end with.
• learned to pay attention to the vowel sound we hear in words and sorted pictures by the vowel sound. 

We also had a special author, Chris Van Dusen, visit this week.  We were so lucky to hear him read aloud three of his books!

This week during Writing Workshop we:

• practiced thinking of a topic we know all-about and telling the facts we know before we begin writing.
• learned to add a Table of Contents to our all-about books.
• learned that writers can write more than one sentence on each page.
• learned to add a heading to each page that matches our Table of Contents.
• learned to listen to the end of words and to write a letter for the ending sound (many children have been leaving off the ending in words).

  

  
  

   

Happy Spring!
Katie