Friday, January 16, 2015

Buckaroo news for January 13th-January 16th

Hello Families!  It has been another busy week of learning as evident in the photographs that you will see below.  I've done a lot of reflecting on how far the children have come since the beginning of the year and I'm so proud of them! I have been spending time with each of them to assess their reading progress so you may a notice a change in the level of "warm up" books they are now bringing home to share with you.  
Here is a snapshot of our week.  In Word Study, we worked on the hunk-and-chunks /oo/, /ui/ and /ew/ and we've talked about how all three make the "ooooo" sound.  We're learning that we sometimes have to write a word out using all three before we know which one is written correctly because our eyes will tell us.  I've also moved the word study teams around so your child may be working on a different team if they mention it.  In Writer's Workshop, we are continuing to work on persuasive letters.  We played a game called Four Corners.  I gave four choices after a statement and the children had to go to the corner that best reflected his/her opinion.  Then that group had to come up with at least two good reasons to defend their opinion.  For example, which season is the best season?  This is an activity that I will be adapting to all subject areas as they LOVED moving around and making choices.  We are also reading a lot of books to model this type of writing.  In Science, we are continuing our study of penguins.  The children explored PebbleGo and chose a penguin in which to do research.  In Math, we are working with tens and ones. We also worked on writing in expanded form which was tricky.  For example, 46=40 +6.  In Reader's Workshop,  we are learning how to make meaningful connections.  I read a very touching story to them entitled Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco.  It was a long story to read but the children were silent as I read the story of a little girl who struggled to learn to read.  Many of them raised their hands to show that they could relate and connect to her feelings of frustration learning to read.  It opened up a great discussion.  Of course, I cried at the end and had trouble finishing the story but the children understood that they were tears of joy and not of sorrow:).

Conferences are coming up.  My plan is to hold them the week of February 9th in the mornings before school and during related arts time from 1:45-2:30.  If you feel that you need a conference please let me know and we will arrange a time.  

Our schedule for next week:  Monday - NO SCHOOL  Tuesday - P.E.  Wednesday - Art  Thursday - Music  Friday - Library
We were learning about penguins using the laptops.  
This picture was taken after the big game between Ohio State and Oregon.  The Buckeyes won!!
This kid is holding Phoebe, our library dog.  Phoebe is cute and cuddly and when we are listening to Miss Clark read a book she falls asleep on Miss Clark's lap.  Phoebe is our school dog.  Phoebe begs for chicken and salmon from Mrs. McNeal.  These are two of her favorite foods.
During math, we made a tens and ones game.  You build towers of tens with ones.  
We made bowls in Art.  We are holding those bowls and the penguins that you're seeing we made in our classroom.  Mrs. McNeal took our picture.  To make the bowls, we used clay and we put our thumb in and started to pinch it. All of us made our bowls different.  None of us copied each other.  All of you that are reading the blog right now, you might notice that some of the kids don't have their bowls because they had to get them reglazed which is painting with special paint.  
One of the girls is giving the other girl bunny ears.  We were playing the How To Build a Robot game on Starfall.  The game was on the 2nd grade math on Starfall.  
Today we are learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. because yesterday was his birthday.  On Monday, we celebrate him.  He gave his speech in front of the Washington monument.  In the video that he says his speech, he says "I have a dream" a lot!  
Here is a picture of him.  On the computer it was peach but on the whiteboard it was black and white.  On YouTube, this was when he was doing his speech and saying "I Have a Dream" a lot.  

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