Our First Week!

We have had a wonderful week...I have to say it again, thank you so much for sending such "ready to learn" children into my classroom!!

We spent quite a bit of time this week getting to know each other. We all enjoyed learning about our classmates while they shared their "All About Me" bags. I told the kids that I was looking for strong volume and good eye contact during speaking...and they delivered!! We took notes while we listened so that we could record facts about each other.

In Language Arts we have been discussing reading strategies and the students have begun using a Reader's Response Journal. We often break into groups for instruction, in order to be able to work more closely with each student, and this week we focused on what to do during independent work time while not meeting with me! They have adjusted very well and I'm very proud of all of them. Next week we will continue with strategies for good readers and jump into a novel.

We did quite a bit of writing as well! We wrote acrostic poems about the Olympics. We used different resources and our schema (background knowledge) to collect information about the Olympics. The children wrote their poems in class and published the poems in the computer lab today! They will be hanging for you to read on Back to School Night...we have some amazing writers! We also wrote pieces titled, "The Important Thing About Me" after reading The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown. The students did a wonderful job on these pieces and you can see them on September 11th, too!

This week, in Math, we collected data and reviewed the important parts of a bar graph. The students were introduced to line plots and next week will be gathering information to find averages...the mean, median, and mode. They are very enthusiastic about math and we have a good time while learning!

In Social Studies we spent time this week defining rules, laws, and being a good citizen...all which tie into our classroom, as well as our Political Science unit. We have reviewed classroom rules and the consequences...these students are very well behaved and all seem to do well with quiet verbal warnings.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me or call me. I hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day weekend and I will see your kids on Tuesday!