Reading/Language Arts
We have been very busy during reading. I have evaluated the reading level of all of the students. I will send their reading level home to you ASAP. During that time, the boys and girls were busy working in centers. In our Phonics center, the students have been working on how to read and write CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words. They have been playing matching games and working together to read and write these easy to sound out words. We are almost done learning about all of our consonants and will be moving on to our short vowel sounds next. The kids have had the opportunity to play ABC bingo games and other fun alphabet games during the ABC center time. In the Listening Center, the kids have been focusing on how to choose their favorite part of the story and also pick out words that they know from the story. It really is amazing to see how well they are writing! We have been focusing on how to write about the animals that we were learning about in the writing center. It is amazing how much they remembered and learned about each animal. In the Poetry Center, the boys and girls are still matching words to build the poem and they are putting it in their poetry journal. We have made lots of crafts in our Creation Center and we have found lots of words in our Read and Write Around the Room Center. We have also focused a lot on building and practicing our star words in the Word Work Center. It is a busy time in Reading!
During guided reading, we are focusing on being "word detectives." We are focusing on the reading strategies that they should use when they come to a word they do not know. I will be sending the list of strategies that we are learning about so yout can practice at home with your child as well. We focused on how to pull out the important information from a nonfiction text. We made lists and made our own books about the important information that was learned. Now we are going to focus on how to do a great retelling of a story that we are reading. We will be focusing on this skill during our reading lessons for a great deal of time.
Math
We have also learned a lot during our Math time. We focused recently on our Investigations program, which allows the students to learn math skills through playing Math games. It is lots of fun for the kids and they really enjoy it. We have been learning about counting, measuring, and adding numbers together. We did some measuring activities, in which we measured with sticks and snap cubes. We counted numbers and represented those numbers. We are now focusing on how to add numbers together. We have been working on story problems while we add numbers together. We will be focusing a lot on adding and taking numbers away in the next few weeks.
Science
Over the past few months, Mrs. Lawless has been working with the class on the five senses. They have learned about what the five senses are and how we use our five senses. In our classroom, we began learning all about motion and how we can use balls and ramps. We learned about the bounciness of different kinds of playing balls. We also learned about how to create our own ball and we learned how to compare and contrast different types of balls and soon we will be designing our own ramps. Science has been so much fun!
As you can see, we have been extremely busy in our room. We will continue keeping very busy and we will be learning so many new things as the year continues. I can't wait to see how much the class grows and develops as the year goes on!
Here are some pictures of the centers and projects that we have done over the past few weeks:
