Wow! What a busy week we’ve had!
Monday we had MAP testing, Wednesday we practiced for our Grand Day gathering
presentation, and Thursday we had all of the lovely grandparents visiting our
classroom.
In the mix
of all that’s been going on we have also been super busy in the classroom. In
math we’ve been working on a new game called “More” and the kids absolutely
love it; they groan when it’s time to put the game away. This game is similar
to “I declare war” or “War”, but not only do they have to determine which card
is larger, they also have to figure out by how much. The kids are given a
chance to independently work on their adding and subtracting skills in a fun
way that incorporates some cool manipulatives like playing cards and connecting
blocks.
During our
last curriculum night the kids showed you how to subtract using the number line
method. As promised we’ve moved on to subtracting using the traditional
vertical method and I’m proud to say that they have progressed beautifully. We
will continue working on this, because as we know practice makes for even more
progress!
We’ve also
been continuing our study of figurative language this week. We learned about
personification and idioms through the read alouds Even More Parts by Ted Arnold and Dear Mrs. Larue: Letters From Obedience School by Mark Teague. The
kids really enjoyed the books and the figurative language from this week.
They’ve been working hard to come up with examples of these on their own and
also to find examples in the books that they are currently reading. I was
surprised as to how much they loved these two books, so much that they’ve been
using them during their independent reading time. I’ve also noticed that they
having been using the book version of the folktales we’ve been studying to read
during independent reading time.
Speaking of folk tales I would like to thank
all of you who added to our growing conversations around folktales. This week
we have been continuing our discussion around the multiple versions of
Cinderella, but we’ve also looked at a few other folktales. We’ve listened to
an African American folktale titled The
People Could Fly (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0C151dnDqg#aid=P-bWH6MwqFo)
and had a very intriguing conversation around slavery, African American
culture, American culture, and what we thought the story was telling us. You
won’t be surprised to know that your children had very strong and insightful
opinions. Friday we will listen to Who
Speaks for Wolf (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjQ_TBD4umI)
and I’m sure we will have another great discussion around this piece.
Last but defiantly not least, POETRY! We finished up our
poetry books this week and they came out amazing! The kids worked really hard
to create poetry that was meaningful to them and they were able to present that
hard work to their grandparents today.
We hope you all have a wonderful spring break. We're going to leave you with some photos from It's a Grand Day.
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