Our Fabulous Fall

We have had a blast this fall from our trip to the Big Orange Pumpkin Patch, The Boosterthon Fun Run, and our Thanksgiving program.

The much anticipated bus ride!

Feeding the animals

Fun on the hay ride!

Yep, this one's perfect!

Thanks to all of the parent volunteers that made our fall so fabulous!

Subtraction Stories

There was a lot separating happening during Math Workshop. We had a great time with some of our favorite storybook characters. We learned that separating stories have clues that tell us to subtract. Students used Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons to act out subtraction his subtraction story! Pete is class favorite! We saw what the matching equation as each button popped off and rolled away.

The kiddos also had a great time acting out Five Speckled Frogs with hand puppets. 

Schema

We learned that schema is everything we know about a topic. We talked about how our brains work like file cabinets. When we read or listen to a story our brain "pulls that file" or topic and immediately begins to use the information we already know to help make sense of new info. For example....we read a nonfiction book about pumpkins. As soon as we identified the topic (pumpkins), we began using our pumpkin schema. It was interesting to see the wide variety of background knowledge. 

The seeds show our schema! 

After sharing each other's schema, we then read the book. We put our new learning on the leaves and found that we had we can use our schema to help make sense of new information. Our schema grows as we read, read, read!

Building Our Reading Stamina

Students have worked really hard building their reading stamina! We have reached 8 minutes of solid reading time. What makes this so special is that they worked together as a class! When we build stamina, we read books that we can read, on our own. Students learned that when we read, we will build up our reading brain a little at a time...just like a weight lifter would or a runner. This called for a celebration! A reading celebration! Students wanted to read with their shoes off and use the special pointers. That's exactly what we did!

Math Workshop

As we have been working with numbers 0-5, students have been problem solving, thinking about numbers flexibly, and counting! 

Here we are playing Break the Train. One partner holds a 5 stick of cubes behind their back and then breaks it. They hold one part behind their and show their partner the remaining part. The partner has to determine how many cubes are behind their partner's back!

We have also been learning how to show different ways to make the same number. Students matched as many dominoes as they could to show each number.

We have also been comparing sets of numbers throughout the past couple of weeks. We played One Less Bingo to show that we can think about numbers mentally. Students had to mark the number that is one less! Our brains were definitely on to play this challenging game!

Great job mathematicians!

Telling Stories Through Our Pictures

Last week we learned during Writer's Workshop, that we can add characters to our pictures when write. Our pictures help the reader understand details about what we wrote. Pictures help to tell the story! We used this anchor chart to help draw characters. 

This week we have been adding the setting to our pictures. Check out some of our pieces! Look at the writing that is beginning! I am so proud of my writers!

Writing Numbers

Here is a copy of our Number Poems. We use these to help us form our numbers correctly! The 2 and the 5 can be tricky to make. Number reversals ( flipping numbers backward) are age appropriate at this time. This should correct over time with a good amount of exposure.