Welcome Back!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Spring Break! I am so excited about this last couple of months with your kiddos! First, the Work Journal #7 and Project Plan (Yes, a new project!!) are up on my Digital Portfolio under “Learning Goals” and “Projects.” Our new project is a “tinkering” project, where we are going to be making musical instruments. I am so excited for this one! I could use some help gathering up cool materials for the students to use in building their instruments. If you happen to have any cloth, tissue boxes, buttons, plastic pipe, wire, wood scraps, cardboard, duct tape, string, old Tupperware, or any other interesting junk that you do not want, please drop it off in our classroom! I think there may be extra need for tape (duct and masking). I wanted to let everyone know that for the last 7 weeks, Patrick is going to be teaching my class writing, and I will be teaching his class math. I will be touching base with him regularly and letting you know about what they are working on during Writer's Workshop. Overall, they will be working on building "powerful paragraphs." For these last 7 weeks of school, I am going to be doing an individualized spelling word list for each student. They will be working in class to create a home and school spelling word list. They will be bringing this list home next week, so please look for it. There will be between 4 and 7 words on the list. The student is expected to work on these words daily (both home and school days) until they bring home a new list. Here is a list of fun ways to practice spelling words at home: 1. Rainbow words: write your words three times, one right over the next, with different colored crayons. 2. Shaving cream words: squirt shaving cream on a table or desk and trace spelling words three times while spelling aloud. 3. Chalk words: go outside. Write your spelling words one time on the sidewalk. Hop on the letters and call them out as you spell your words. 4. Typed words: type out your words on the computer or Ipad. Email them to someone to show what you are working on. 5. Traced words: trace your words on sandpaper, felt or in the sand. Spell them out loud. 6. ABC words: write your words in abc order 7. Words three times: write your words three different ways...small, large and in your best printing. I hope that the Work Journal meetings are helpful in getting the new math curriculum off the ground at home. Please let me know if you are having any problems with Task #3. Below is the math curriculum schedule with added names for clarity. I hope that everyone is doing great and feeling ready for this last home stretch. Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help you in any way :) Robin Hi Core 2 Parents,
I wanted to let you know about an exciting math development in Core 2! I will be giving a short workshop on this at our upcoming Work Journal meetings (April 22nd and 24th: 2-2:50pm), but I wanted to give you a head start as it will impact your home school teaching the first week back after Spring Break. Starting April 21st, I will be switching over to using a math curriculum and encouraging parents to use the same curriculum at home. I have created a plan where each week I cover certain lessons at school, and parents are asked to cover other lessons at home. I am hoping this leads to more continuity for our students as they build these fundamental math skills. I know that this is a change, and I expect that there will be aspects of this that will take some figuring out, so please be patient, and let me know your thoughts. I will be using a fabulous free online curriculum that is put out by the state of Georgia: https://www.georgiastandards.org/common-core/pages/math-k-5.aspx For the last part of this year we will be tackling repeated addition, in order to build the skills needed to move towards multiplication. This lines up perfectly with our new curriculum’s Second Grade, Unit 6: https://www.georgiastandards.org/Common-Core/Common%20Core%20Frameworks/CCGPS_Math_2_Unit6FrameworkSE.pdf I would suggest reading the first 14 pages of this unit, as that will give you a nice overview of what we will be covering. The way it will work is that each week I will teach certain Tasks (lessons) and you will teach certain Tasks. Below you will find a button that leads you to the Math Curriculum Schedule. I will also be giving you guidance on how to adapt these lessons for home school (rather than the classroom) and additional word problems and math games as we go through the unit. Please take some time to explore the new curriculum and plan your first Task (Task 3). Please note that most of the Tasks take more than one day to complete, as they have several parts. Please plan to come to our next Work Journal meeting, and bring any questions that you have about the new math curriculum! Thanks, and have a great Spring Break! Robin Hi Everyone! There has been a slight change of plans for our upcoming Exhibition. Instead of Exhibition being from 5:00pm- 7:00 pm, it will now be from 5:00pm- 6:30pm. This means that there will be a change in our schedule: Your child will be responsible for presenting their insect experiment for 20 minutes and their insect storybook for 20 minutes (for a total of 40 minutes in the classroom presenting). They will also have 40 minutes to explore Exhibitions happening in other classrooms. We will all meet back in the classroom for a short concert at the end of the night (6:20pm).
Please help your student practice answering these questions in the week before Exhibition: What does an Entomologist do? How did you use the scientific method when doing your experiment? What did you learn about insects from doing your experiment? What prewriting did you do to help you plan your Insect Storybook? How was it helpful? Why do insects have adaptations? What interesting adaptations have you learned about? They will be expected to present both their storybook and their group experiment on their own, and therefore will need some practice answering these questions in order to feel successful on Exhibition night. Please let me know if there is a conflict with a siblings exhibition time, so that we can figure it out! Make sure to check the dress code flyer (part of previous blog post). Announcements: Scholastic Book Fair Mon, 4/7 through Fri, 4/11 Our class will have a chance to preview the Book Fair on Mon/ Tues and a chance to shop at the Book Fair on Thurs/ Friday. You can also stop by and check it out during Exhibition! |
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February 2017
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