A Special Visit

On Wednesday of this week, we were lucky to have author Lynn Plourde visit Rowe School.  The children had the opportunity to listen to Lynn read aloud Dino Pets, then the children worked with her to learn about copycat writing (creating our own version of a text we have read).

This week during Reading Workshop we:

• learned to have our buddy check-for-understanding throughout the reading of a book.  Every so often, a reader can stop and ask his/her buddy "What have we read/learned so far?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• learned to check-in with our buddy after reading a book.  When we finish reading to our buddy, we should ask him/her to tell us what they learned or what the story was about.
• learned that readers can compare and contrast books about the same/similar topics.
• reviewed that after saying all the sounds in a word, we then need to put the word back together and read it as a whole word instead of just individual sounds.

During Word Work, we practiced reading words with short and long vowel sounds.  We have learned that when there is one vowel in the middle of the word without any other vowels in the word, it makes the short vowel sound.  When there is a "super e" at the end of a word, it can jump over one letter and make the vowel say its name.  Another way to make a long vowel sound is when "2 vowels go walking, the first one does the talking" (when 2 vowels are together in a word, the first vowel usually says its name).  On Friday, we played a board game to help us practice reading all these types of words.

This week during Writing Workshop we worked on writing All-About (nonfiction) books.  We learned to:

• think of a topic we know all about and write facts about that topic.
• think of how we want our books to be organized, then write headings on the top of each page.
• write a Table of Contents to match our headings.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• draw realistic pictures to help our reader learn even more about the topic.

This week during Math we:

• told and solved addition and subtraction number stories with a partner.
• used a balance scale to compare weights of different objects.
• solved subtraction number models.
• worked with a partner to conduct surveys and depict our results in some sort of graph/chart decided on by the partnership (we will finish these graphs on Monday).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

It looks like the arrival of spring this weekend will bring with it a possible snow storm!  If our playground is covered in snow next week, please make sure your child has all the appropriate gear needed to play outside.

Have a nice weekend!
Katie