Reading/Writing: Last week we finished up our unit on polar animals with an opinion piece. This month we have learned about polar animals and all of their special adaptations that allow them to live in such extreme environments. On Friday, each student chose one animal that we have read about or studied and answered the question, "which animal is best adapted for the polar environment." Students had to back up their opinion with at LEAST three facts. We are now working on podcasts so that we can share our opinions with you, the parents. We would love to hear what you think!
Our reading strategy for this week is author's purpose/theme. This is truly a higher level concept as students must try to figure out the lesson the author is trying to teach the audience. In order to help us understand some underlying themes a little better we watched clips from some of our favorite children's movies (Pinnochio-Honesty, Toy Story 3- Perserverance, Charlotte's Web- Kindness).
This week we are also studying contractions. I have noticed recently that our students are getting caught up on contractions when they read. They are having difficulty understanding their meaning, so we had a little fun today to help us understand contractions and how they really work. Check it out:
Calling Dr. Murphy, calling Dr. Murphy....
Today we did surgery on some familar words. To help us understand what contractions are we actually cut and made contractions ourselves using our scissors, glue, and bandaids we were able to fix those word right up. Take a look!
Math: Today we took our post test on 2-D and 3-D shapes. Our students have worked so hard during this unit and have really had a lot of fun, as well. Shapes are all around us and it is so easy to find them everywhere if you just look. Even though we are moving on with our curriculum, please continue to review shapes at home with your little one. It can be as easy as going on a quick scavenger hunt in your yard or in your house!
This week we are moving on to numbers to 40 and with this brings 2-digit addition and subtraction. The students are becoming real experts on their facts from 1-10 so I do believe this will help greatly as we head into this new journey. Keep up the practice at home!
Science: In science we are now studying food chains. This topic was breifly touched upon at the beginning of the year but this unit takes us even more in depth and looks at food chains in numerous habitats. We have been learning an awesome song about food chains and I have been so impressed with the vocabulary the students have been able to retain.
Well, that's all for now folks. I will be sending home MAP scores at the end of this week as well as news regarding the Valentine's Day party coming up on February 14th.
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