We have kicked off March with a great deal of fun and learning all around books here at Dublin! We are already 7 mystery readers into March and are excited to welcome several more of you throughout the month! We celebrated Reading Night this past Tuesday night with several different guest readers, reading themed stations (crafts and games) as well as several contests and cool prizes. It was so fun to see so many of our families here this past Tuesday night to celebrate reading! The book fair also came to Dublin this week and we had fun browsing all of the new books from Scholastic. We had special visitors this past week from Project Newf all the way in Florida. If you haven't heard, Kermit and Fozzie Bear, two newfoundland dogs were found roaming the halls of Dublin this week and along with their owners, they taught us how they became children's book authors! We ended our week with a whole school Pajama Day and Read-In! For the last hour of the day, almost the whole school, teachers included, could be caught curled up reading a book!
Here are some pictures from our visit with Fozzie and Kermit, from Project Newf and their trainers/owners!
Readers' Workshop:
Readers' Workshop has transitioned in the last few weeks and you may have noticed the absence of guided reading books coming home. So what have we been up to? Book Clubs! Our students were separated into groups based on reading abilities and placed in student-led book club groups. Each group had the same book or books from the same series. Each day they were tasked with holding a group meeting discussion... following along with a plan of spending one day a week on: predictions, connections, wonderings, new vocabulary and comprehension. It was pretty neat to step back and watch the clubs in action while adding scaffolding and support as needed to different groupings. As we move more now into non-fiction books, guided reading groups with books coming home will return and we will be spending our time in groups and in workshop focusing in on Non-Fiction Features and how these unique features in Non-Fiction texts can help us as readers to gather information and create mental files categorizing our new learning.
Please check your child's book bag for a yellow paper indicating their group number and the dates their group meets. It is imperative that they are bringing these books to and from school and spending time practicing their reading and then talking about what they are learning from the non-fiction texts. In order for our kids to best be prepared for third grade and beyond, reading time must be made daily at home just like it is made at school. Thank you for your help with this!
Partners have begun making lists of these features including: table of contents, index, glossary, bold print, captions, labels, how-to's, diagrams, photographs, illustrations, captions and more! By becoming experts at readers of Non-Fiction, we are better preparing ourselves to begin to write Non-Fiction in the coming weeks!
Writers' Workshop:
Our writers' are having a great time with our latest unit! We began by learning how to write letters but our letters also had a purpose as each letter written was either about a book or a book series that we were enjoying reading. We have learned how to incorporate all of the features of a friendly letter about a book including: title of book, author, illustrator, important events, opinions about the book, a rating scale, transition words to share information, greeting/closing, date and address. We have transitioned from writing letters about books to writing reviews about some of our favorite things: toys, restaurants and food! It has been awesome to conference with the kids and hear their passions about favorite toys, why they enjoy certain restaurants and what makes a food so wonderful (to them). They have been eager to share with the class at the end of a Writers' Workshop time and we have been eager to hear all that they have to say on various topics. Be sure to ask them about the toys, food and restaurants they have been writing about, and why!
Math Workshop:
We have been busy, busy, busy in math lately! We have been learning about story problems and how to use different diagrams to help us solve story problems that are either addition, subtraction or both. Next we have moved on to ballpark estimates and this has been a tricky topic for our students. I recently sent a remind text of the photo you'll see below featuring a chart we have been using daily in math. I have included this chart in my email as well so that you can use this at home to help your child practice and learn. We have taught double digit addition as well using base ten blocks and partial sums method. I promise, we will be learning how to "carry over" soon (as you and I learned), but we strongly believe that teaching alternative methods gives each and every child a strategy that best fits their style of learning and it is important that they are exposed to different strategies and thinking to build their number sense.
Additionally in Math we have added a new and very popular Math Station! Have you heard about Merge Cubes? If you haven't, and you have a smartphone, you should head to Walmart and get one, for $1!! The apps are free and are so neat!! It's a mix between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality - and we love them!!
Social Studies
In Social Studies we have just wrapped up our Geography Unit! In this unit we learned about maps, our local geography, and the different kinds of land forms we can find on maps and around the world! We especially enjoyed looking at local maps and spreading them out around the classroom. We talked about the map symbols and the importance of map keys. Our learners were excited and proud of the maps that they each created of White Lake, MI!
Science
Air and Weather is our next Science kit that has arrived! We have been focusing in on air first- how we know it exists, how we can see air in water, how we know air takes up space and looking at ways that we can move air. Soon we will shift to talk more about weather - the temperature on thermometers, how we measure rain in a rain gauge and how we measure wind-speed on an anemometer.
Important Dates/Reminders:
Thursday, March 15th - Half Day of School: Teacher PD in the afternoon
Friday, March 30- April 8th - Spring Break (Remember, no school on March 30 for Good Friday)
Please, please, please make sure to follow us on Twitter!!! Pictures and updates almost daily are posted from our classroom and show a lot more than we can on the Blog :-). Our Twitter Name is: WeAreTheWeckies
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