We continued to work on knowing classroom routines and expectations. We continued this by modeling through Responsive Classroom activities that promote teamwork, respect, and inclusion.
We used various read aloud books to demonstrate strategies we can use for decoding words and strategies for reading fluency and comprehension through the use of Reader’s Theatre. We will work on writing our own informational text based on the research we made about our topic.
We also started working on writing our own informational text based on the research we made about our topic.
We explored a variety of nonfiction text and discussed their text features. The text features include:
- Photographs, Illustrations
- Introductions
- Text box
- Author’s Note
- Labels
- Headings
- Bolded Words
- Captions
- Diagrams
- Table of contents glossary
- Timelines
- Maps
For writing we introduced Informational Writing. We read informational texts, discussed the importance of authors choosing topics and subtopics that they know and cared about. We noticed how organizational structures of information texts (chapters, subtopics, etc.) and text features (how information is displayed through charts, diagrams etc.) supports the reader’s understanding of a topic. We will be selecting a topic of interest and then create our own informational book by developing our topics with facts, definitions, details, and continue to use appropriate text features.
For math, we worked hard on remembering our math facts so that it could help us solve math problem more efficiently. We also learned a variety of strategies to help solve many different math situations. We used bar models as a visual tool to help us identify the problem and the operation to use.We focused on using real world problems by applying addition concepts (part-whole, adding on sets, and comparing) and subtraction concepts (part-whole, taking away, and comparing). We used bar models for addition, subtraction and multiplication.
In science, students have concluded their study of Weather and Climate. During this unit students learned about weather and climate in different places.They explored how weather is different on different days using various hands-on experiences such as thermometers to measure temperature, anemometers to measure wind speed, and rain gauges to measure rainfall. Students collected data using these tools and graphed and analyzed weather data to make predictions for the coming year.
We also looked at extreme weather like tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. Students pretended to be storm chasers where they examined different types of weather and found out the effects it caused to an area. Their last job was to determine how people could reduce extreme weather damage, after exploring climates in different parts of the world they were asked to debate and vote for one lightning rod design and one levee design to prevent fires and flooding, and choose a roof design that is best for a place that gets blizzards.
In January we are looking forward to our next science unit on Forces and Motion.
For social studies, we worked on our family celebration projects and they came out great! Students interviewed a family member about a special family celebration. In class we studied various holidays/celebrations and learned about each families customs and traditions. The students presented their projects to their classmates and then we had our annual celebration breakfast. Thank you to everyone that joined and for your continued support.