Today, we started an "I Spy Time Scavenger Hunt". We had to find the clocks that were posted around the school and record the time!
This week we started telling time to the nearest five minutes. One of our activities was a "Time Check", where we stopped throughout the day to record the time. Later, we learned about A.M an P.M, and used our skill to think about how we use time throughout our day (and night!). Today, we started an "I Spy Time Scavenger Hunt". We had to find the clocks that were posted around the school and record the time!
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Today we learned how and why communities change. We started by thinking about growing communities. We learned that jobs bring people to a community, and that the people have different needs. Then, we made our own model of a growing community. Then we had a great discussion about how communities change! Tomorrow we'll be talking about when and why a community gets smaller. One student already pointed out that Detroit's community got bigger when people moved there for jobs in the car industry, so we were able to talk about what happens when factories close. We also discussed how our community is always changing because of the university.
1. Scholastics are due Friday, December 5th. If you order books for a gift let me know so I can get them to you without your child seeing. This order will be in before our holiday break. 2. No School this Wednesday-Friday due to Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I know I'll be spending mine with my family and enjoying every second of it, especially the time I get to spend with grandparents and nieces/nephews! I hope you have time to spend with your family as well! 3. If your child is in need of an AAPL library card then please return the yellow sheet asap. Thank you! 4. Report cards come home on Monday. 5. No Special Kid next week due to the short week. Last week in science students learned about parts of the brain that activate senses. They looked at PET scans, which is a picture of a human brain taken by a very sensitive machine to show active parts of the brain in color. Then they tried foods that were new to many of them to think about reaction in their brains. They tried cornichons, coconut chips, fennel bulb, and roasted seaweed! Here are just a few pictures of our field trip to the UMS concert to see Jake Shimabukuro play the ukelele! Hello! I have some pictures building up on my camera from the last week, so I thought I'd share! We've been learning about goods,factories, assembly lines, and transportation in social studies. We reenacted our own assembly line in class! We finished our personal narrative writing unit and had a writing celebration! Everyone read their story aloud to the class and we got a sweet treat to celebrate!
Each week for homework students bring home a sheet with our spelling words. This is taken from the Words Their Way program. I know what you're thinking, "Those boxy things?". While students are working on spelling those words at home, we're actually doing a variety of activities with them in class! These words are SO important for many reasons. They allow your child to practice spelling words that are at their level, they increase word recognition, and they reinforce phonics and decoding skills. In a nut shell, the goal of these words is not just to be able to spell them correctly, but also to increase reading and writing fluency. You don't need to actually cut up the words at home because we'll take care of that in class! Here's a peek at what our spelling practice looks like in class. MONDAY: Students get a copy of their sort for the week. They color in the headings, cut out the words, and then work independently to sort the patterns. At this point, students are working on their own to try and find the spelling pattern for the week while I walk around to help. TUESDAY: We do a lesson on the spelling patterns found in each sort. We go over all the sorts, but focus the most on the sorts that surround the long and short vowel sounds. After, students go back an re-sort their words. This time, they have to explain the patterns to me when I come around. WEDNESDAY: Partner day! Students get with their WTW partner and quiz each other on the words. First, Partner 1 reads Partner 2 a word. Then, Partner 2 has to tell which pattern that word follows. This gives students practice listening for the vowel in the word. After they finish, they quiz each other on word spellings. THURSDAY: We go to the computer lab and practice spelling our words on spelling city.com. You can do this at home by going to www.spellingcity.com/angellbrennan FRIDAY: This is our last chance to practice our words. We re-sort our words and glue them down onto a piece of paper. These go into our binders so we can look at them throughout the year if we need to. Then, students get with their WTW partner and give each other the "Spelling Check". This is my way of checking to see if students grasp the pattern for the week. If they miss a word on the spelling check, I call them up one at a time throughout the week and go over the word with them. I love this program because every day it gives us an opportunity to move around and talk about the patterns we see in words!
Yesterday in class we did a science experiment on the color black! We started with the question, "What is the color black?". ![]() Then we started our science experiment. I got this experiment idea from this link, http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/is-black-black. During our experiment we learned the words soluble and chromotography. Students used: Coffee Filters Water Soluble Black Marker Pipe Cleaners Cup Water First we used our black markers to draw a design on our coffee filters. Then, we popped the filters on a pipe cleaner and added a few drops of water. After we let is stand for 15 minutes, our filters looked like this: We were so stunned and we realized that to make the color black you need all the colors of the rainbow! Last, we recorded our observations in our science journals. We also noted that the color black, like we see at night time, is actually the absence of all colors. At then end, when I asked students again, "What is the color black?", one of our friends said,
"The color black is beautiful!". I couldn't have said it any better myself! This week in social studies we finished learning about the different types of communities. In this unit we were reading about communities, learning a community song, watching videos of communities, using our bodies to show community populations, and so much more! Here's a little peak at how we ended our unit. Then, we each were given one item to make out of construction paper. We had to think about where we'd most likely see our item in order to determine which community group we belonged to. After, we mapped out our communities on poster paper. I loved the conversations I was hearing during this time. Students were thinking critically about what their communities needed. I heard things like, "There are people walking from their house to the park so we should add a sidewalk," or, "The street should be outside the restaurant, and there should be a bus stop there so people can go eat!" It was also great teamwork practice! You can view our models outside our classroom. Ask your child which community they helped with and what type of things they made for it!
Our friend Ashley submitted a joke for our student blog! Make sure you take a look when you get a chance! Here are some recent pictures from our trip to the Arb and our learning!
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