A Snowy Week!

Where is all this snow coming from?!  It's hard to believe we are putting another snow day in the books.  We should be celebrating our 100th day of school on Thursday, but at this rate, who knows when the 100th day will be!

Last week during Reading Workshop, we began our "Reading for Information" unit.  We:

• learned about the difference between fiction (made up story) and nonfiction (real information).
• learned that nonfiction books usually have real photographs to help us learn more about the topic.
• learned about a glossary.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

During Writing Workshop, we kicked off our how-to unit.  Children are writing books to teach others how to do something they know how to do.  We learned to:

• think of something we know how to do, and write the steps to teach others how to do it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• tell the steps out loud before writing the words.
• use sequencing words to keep our steps in order.
• act out our steps to help us remember the details.

Last week during Math we:

• learned the names and characteristics of cylinders, spheres, cubes, rectangular prisms, and cones.  Students played a mystery block game to practice describing the characteristics of these objects.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• discussed the differences between 2-dimensional shapes and 3-dimensional objects. 
• read Two of Everything, by Lily Toy Hong, a book about doubling, then created our own number models.
• learned about the word "attribute" and sorted children in the class by common attributes. 

A couple times a month, our class gets together with Mrs. Boutin's class for our first grade reading buddies.  Here's a glimpse of our buddy reading from Friday, February 3:

I hope your children enjoy the extra snowy day off.  I look forward to seeing them for our Valentine's Day celebration on Tuesday.

Warmly,

Katie