Happy Snowy Friday Weckie Fams!
We are back in the routine of things here and have had a great 8 days back from Winter Break! The weather this week has been a doozy in true Michigan winter fashion. Please make sure to send ALL winter gear daily as we are going outside for recess daily and many kids are complaining of being cold or unprepared. I would suggest just keeping snow-pants, boots, hat and gloves in a bag that goes back and forth daily. A few are also keeping extra gloves, socks and pants in their backpacks which is also a great idea for days when the playground is extra wet!
Word Work
In Word Work this week we are working on tackling long words part by part! We have taken time to:
- Work methodically across big words from beginning to end
- Break between two consonants in the middle of words
- Keep digraphs together (ie. 'gh' in words)
- Keep endings together (-ing, -ed, -s, -es, and -er)
This is an important list of strategies kids can use when breaking up these two and three syllable words that they are coming across in their reading. We also spent time learning a new rule this week. When breaking a word up in the middle between a double consonant, the first vowel tends to be short (think of the word hopping - the 'o' makes an 'ah' sound, a short o compared to the word hoping, where there is not a double consonant, so the 'o' makes a long vowel sound and says it's name like 'oh'. We compared several words like: hopping/hoping, dinner/diner, supper/super, tapping/taping. New SNAP words were added to our SNAP words book this week including: better, different, happen and follow. Notice, they all have that double consonant in the middle and the first vowel makes the short sound!
Readers' Workshop
In Readers' Workshop we are reading two mentor non-fiction texts all about volcanoes! We spent time this week zooming in on "expert words" within the texts. These are words that help us to be a better expert on the topic of the book. Expert words we found in our volcano books included: crust, mantle, core, magna, lava and erupt! Students then had time to collect their own expert words on non-fiction books during independent and partner reading. It was cool to hear all of these big words being played with and defined by our young experts!
Writers' Workshop
The talk of reading expert words in non-fiction has carried over to the ability to use expert words in our own non-fiction writing that we are creating. Each writer is currently working on their own expert non-fiction chapter book and has been challenged now to make sure they are including those expert words. These are word we would expect to see boldfaced in the writing and soon to be included in the glossary they will create for the back of their books! It has been fun to see the wide range of expert topics we are including in our classroom, from how to play different sports, to how to play different video games and then even about the different kinds of pastas and dance classes you can take!
Mathematics
In Math we are working on two big concepts. First we have spent a great deal of energy learning how to tell time! We have created our own clocks and have been practicing learning how to tell time on the clocks to the nearest 5-minute interval. Kids needing extra practice have been learning to play a clock concentration game to make telling time a little more engaging and also meaningful as they have to be able to read the clock to find the match! Additionally, we are working on place value in math. We got out the base-ten blocks this week and practiced making numbers with partners that were representing numbers up to 360 in base-10 blocks. Students were given a challenge today to explain how they knew what number was represented by a large amount of base-10 blocks. It was fun to watch their minds spin as they figured out what number was shown but then also had to explain how they knew the correct answer.
Hundreds Day
Info has come home with the kids on Thursday about 100s Day at Dublin! We plan to celebrate on Friday, February 2nd and need your kids to come as 100 year old students that day! If you have any questions about attire, accessories or the BINGO prize, please let me know asap. It's such an incredibly fun day... please tell your child not to be shy, the more dressed up, the more fun they'll have! Nana Weckstein is excited to see everyone on February 2nd!
