Reader’s Workshop: This week in Workshop we introduced our readers’ to two new “Informational-Fiction” books. We spent time looking at Salamander Rain by Kristin Joy Pratt-Serafini and Wacky Plant Cycles by Valerie Wyatt. Both books exhibit many different non-fiction features and were used to model journal entries that our students completed. Each reader was asked to write about the features they found in a non-fiction book they were reading and explain how the features help them to better understand the topic. We spent time sharing strong examples of journal entries and even practiced fixing up a not so strong ‘teacher-created’ entry! Please look for book bags to come home with your child. The bags give detailed instruction for how they should be used at home!

Writer’s Workshop: In Workshop this week we spent A LOT of time completing our bird research. We made sure that we had collected lots of facts about our birds including: physical description, habitat, nesting, food and interesting facts. There’s an excited buzz in the classroom at the mention of Writer’s Workshop as the kids are EAGER to dig into the field guides and bird specific books to become an expert on their bird! Next week we will start writing the rough drafts for our Non-Fiction Magazine Feature Articles.

Math Workshop: The theme this week is… MONEY! We have spent a great deal of time learning different strategies for comparing monetary amounts and making change. We have practiced counting up using coins and numbers as well as practiced learning how to subtract where we may need to borrow multiple times. Towards the end of the week we began working on a subtraction strategy that uses the “trade-first” algorithm.

Word Study:  This week we did a couple different activities in Word Study. We spent time looking at the endings of words including: -ain, -ight and –eam. Next we spent time working on homographs. These are words that look the same but have two different meanings. The kids created pictures and corresponding sentences to explain the differences between the two words.

Social Studies: This week we have spent time learning about four main words: goods, services, producers and consumers. We spent time talking about goods and services and their relationship to producers (who need goods) and consumers (who receive services). We read the book, From Cow to Ice Cream and created a diagram to retell the process the goods must go through to become the final product, ice cream! For a special treat, we then taught the kids how to make their very own ice cream! It made for a great surprise and treat on a Friday afternoon. Thanks for helping to supply funding for the ingredients and for sending in ice!

Important Dates/News:

Friday, April 27^th – Dublin Talent Show

Tuesday, May 8^th – PTA Meeting @ 7:00pm

Friday, May 11^th – Mom’s and Muffins @ 8:30am