Oct 15-18

A Few Reminders:

• October 22-24th - Book Fair!
• October 23rd - Parent Teacher interviews. Use this link if you still need to book a time. 
• October 23rd - Earth Rangers Visit @ 2:00pm.
• October 31st - HALLOWEEN

A note from Mrs. K about Halloween

All Robina Families are invited to join us for our annual costume parade at 9:00 am on Wednesday, October 31. Please feel free to dress up as we end our parade with all our other guests doing a lap of the gym to share their costumes. Please keep costume choices preschool friendly. Many of our younger children get frightened by overly gory or scary costumes. Some costume guidelines are listed below. If you are unsure of your costume choice, please email the classroom teacher to do a check in. If costumes that include weapons are brought to school, they will be taken away and returned at the end of the day. Thank you in advance for helping to keep our Halloween day fun and safe!

Please see her blog update for more information regarding appropriate costumes. 

ELA

Reading

Visualizing is our new reading strategy introduced this week! Visualizing; I can make images in my mind to make sense of what I am reading. This is an important skill for students to learn while reading, as it has them focus on the details in what they are reading. It can also help them be more accurate readers, taking their time to read every word and ensure they are building an accurate image in their mind that the author is creating. 

To introduce this strategy, I read aloud to the students having them create an image of what I was reading in their minds, and drawing it out! I used a picture book, Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley.  In the book the author slowly describes the monster piece by pieces, and the students listen to the detail and create their monsters! I love to see how similar each students monster is, AS WELL AS, different - as each student processes the details with their own imagination. I also pick this book as the description of the monster is very vague, which opens up a great discussion on how we can write to create visuals for our readers.

Next, to extend on this, we read a passage about an old house. As I read the passage the first time I had students close their eyes and visualize, listening to the specific details. Then I read it again, allowing them to start drawing the picture in their mind. As a group we brainstormed some of the other things we might experience from the reading, through our senses. What would we smell? Hear? See? Taste? Feel? This has the reader, and student, putting themselves into what their reading.

No one had lived in the house for years. The blue paint was peeling and the yard was overgrown with weeds. The windows on the lower floor were boarded up, and some of the windows on the second floor had been broken, probably by kids throwing rocks at them.

Book Clubs
Based on their top 3 choices from the Book Tasting, I have sorted students into mini book clubs! Some clubs are reading the same book, or books from the same series, or reading together through a picture book. During Read to Self time, they read for 15-20 minutes, and then they get together as a club and retell their chapters/stories, make predictions and share some questions about their own books.

Writing
We mixed some Science and writing this week to introduce students to students to Procedural Writing. This is How To Writing, and students wrote: How To Create a Compost!


First, we watched a few videos about compost and how it is made. There were many steps we had to pay attention to.
Next, we re-watched the video, making jot notes about each step on the board. I recorded answers given to me from the students.

Then, we groups the steps together to write our instructions. Procedural writing will use cue words: first, next, then and finally to describe each step.
Finally, students recorded the steps, so that we could carry out the process the next day!

MATH

We wrapped up our patterns unit this week! Monday was a day for students to work on corrections from the unit and complete some practice questions. They also spent some times in pairs playing patterns games.


We had our quiz on Tuesday and then once I had them marked, I worked with students in small groups to work through their corrections. These marks are in Powerschool. 

A common trend on the quiz for students having incorrect answers was from misreading instructions. Another trend was minor miscalculations when adding or subtracting.  

SCIENCE

We are all about COMPOST! As mentioned earlier, we watched videos and researched the steps to creating our own classroom compost! Once we had the steps down we needed to collect our materials! Students collected brown waste from outside (grass clippings, leaves) and brought it in. 

Together we worked through each step building our compost! 

First, Pick a dark container and drill holes in the top and bottom. 

Next, we need to add about 2 inches of soil. Students came up one by one adding soil until we had enough. Also, each student had a sheet of newspaper to shred and we added that to our soil mixture. 

Then, we needed to add some food! Worms love coffee grinds, banana peels and apple cores. DO NOT ADD fatty foods like meat. 

After, we need to squirt some water on our compost to make it moist - NOT WET. We might have had to test the spray bottle on some kids to make sure it worked. 

FINALLY, WE CAN ADD OUR WORMS!

AND THAT'S HOW WE MADE A COMPOST BIN!

Stay tuned for more updates on our bin throughout the unit. 

SOCIAL

We have wrapped up our unit on Mapping! Students had a quiz on Wednesday. They had a chance to work on corrections in class, through independent open book work. Using their mapping booklets they went through their quiz fixing spelling and answers.