Tuesday, September 15

We are continuing to work on Daily 5 and today we practiced Read to Self and also Read to Someone.  It is really fun to share a book with a buddy and to build reading fluency.  Mrs. Zwack was very proud of everyone for working so hard.

We were all excited to start handwriting today!  We talked about how learning a new skill like this requires focus and attention to instructions and detail.  We are exercising our brains when we take up the challenge of learning something step by step.  Handwriting will become a part of our Daily 5 choices once we get the hang of it and will also become connected to word work later in the year.

When reading about Edward Tulane today, we discovered that he is beginning to change - on the outside and on the inside!  He was rescued from the bottom of the sea by a fisherman and taken home to the little green cottage.  Because he had lost his fine clothes in the ocean, Nellie thought Edward was a girl rabbit!  Tell your parents about how Edward has changed and why you think this happened.

We had a discussion this afternoon about how quickly our afternoons seem to go.  Some said it was like as fast as a snap others said that we just seem to get started and then the day is over.  I couldn't agree more.

This afternoon we learned a lot about pitch and sound in music. Mrs. Jones read the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and using the piano helped us understand  this idea.

In math, we added two new words to our math dictionary.  Addition and Addend - parents please ask your child to explain these to you.  We then had a 3 minute addition basic facts test to see which strategies we are using.  We also got to write about how this made us feel being timed and our strategies in the math thinking part of our math journals.

Then we started to change our thinking and moved onto some subtraction. We looked at the strategy of How Many More?  We used two giant die and looked at the numbers to see how quickly we could identify how many more.  This was fun and we will be able to transfer this to our subtraction strategies.

We are continuing to read No Talking  by Andrew Clements. It is really getting funny.  I wonder if we could go two whole days without talking both in our class and at home???

In gym, we played a pool noodle game. This was exhausting!!! Mrs. Bowles was very tired after running around that much.

Things to Remember:
1.) Meet the Teacher Open House bookings open on Wednesday evening at 7:00 pm
2.)  Entertainment Book Sales are continuing
3.) Milk Orders are due soon

Question of the Day:

Look back in the blog and answer the two questions asked by your teachers.  We will really be able to tell if you are reading the blog.