We have had another awesome week in Core 2! We ended last week talking about Rosa Parks and the bus boycott and creating photo essays around her life. I was beyond inspired by your kids ideas and feelings surrounding her life and the complicated ideas of racism and injustice. This week we begun studying the Wright Brothers. We are focusing on creating physical objects as artifacts and have therefor begun our creation of "flying machines." We will hopefully be flying our flying machines (kites and paper airplanes) at the end of this week :) Jose has joined our class this week during reading time, and the students are beginning to work in small groups. We have primarily been getting used to this change, but we will begin focusing on inference in this next week.. The students have also begun to do word sorts on their own. If word sorts are something that you would like to try at home, please feel free to stop by after school and I can show you ours for some inspiration :) During math we have begun to do word problems that involve subtraction. For those of you who went to Helen Chan's workshop at Jumpstart 2, I have been trying to incorporate her ideas of having students share strategies with each other, and to challenge them to try and solve problems using different strategies. We have also started to talk about odd and even numbers. It seemed to me that most students are comfortable telling whether a one digit number is odd or even, but struggle when it is a 2 digit number. This would be an interesting topic to discuss with your child, and if you notice that they are struggling with 2 digit numbers, review the idea of looking at the ones place! We had discussed handwriting practice at Jumpstart, and I forgot to include the link to buy the handwriting without tears book: http://www.hwtears.com/hwt Again, this is just an option, but I believe a lot of your kiddos would benefit from some handwriting practice. Feel free to get the 1st or the 2nd grade book, depending on your child's needs. There is also a handwriting workshop today (Wednesday, Sep 24th) from 6:30-8:00pm here on campus that looks very helpful. Okay. So I know that you have had to be patient with me as I learn all of the ins and outs of the Work Journal process, and I want to thank you for that. I believe that I have a much better idea now of what is expected of everyone (parent, child, and teacher) when it comes to the Work Journal. Going forward this is what I am looking for on the work journal: 1. All forms signed in ink and dated. 2. Work samples listed with same title as on Work Journal. 3. Work Samples with name (written by student) date and annotations (written by the parent). I know we discussed this at Jumpstart, and I have decided to ask the parents to please make some kind of annotation on each Work Sample. 4. Daily Engagement with initials on all of the days where you did at least 20 minutes of academic work. 5. Enough activities/ lessons listed to show rigorous home learning. I came across this really interesting article on music and rhythm and its relationship to reading that I wanted to share with you. I also wanted to share the writing tips that Patrick made up for his workshop, in case you missed it at Jumpstart 2: As always, please let me know if you have any questions about class work, projects, work journals, or anything else :) am looking forward to another fun filled week with your kiddos! '
Robin I had such a wonderful time getting to meet with all of you today! I love getting a chance to connect and touch base about your kids :) I hope you all had a productive day and came away with new strategies to try at home! This week has been a busy one for us. The project is in full swing and we are having a blast exploring the past. We started this week working as a class to create a Laura Ingalls Wilder Newspaper, which is up on the wall by the door. They started out by filling out job applications to choose their job at the newspaper, and then worked in groups to create their section of the newspaper. I loved that the kids seemed to embrace their roles completely, declaring that they were now an editor, or a cartoonist! We are going to spend the rest of the week studying Rosa Parks and the art of the photo essay! I will update you on how that goes, and would encourage you to have conversations with your kids about photographs and explore using a camera with them :) One of the learning goals that is on your learning plan this month is to begin building the reading comprehension skill of "inference." This can be a complicated skill to help your child with so I wanted to share some tips. The basic idea behind inferring is that the reader is able to combine the text clues with their own background knowledge to draw a conclusion or inference. Here is a basic graphic organizer that can help break down this process for you and your child: We have also added a new math game to our "Math Menu" which is called "Compare with Cards" but really is very similar to the old game "War." If you do not already now how to play this game, your child would LOVE to teach you. They are crazy about this game. This is a fun way to work on building addition fluency, as they have to add up the two cards quickly in order to see if they have won the round or not :)
I am adding the new Work Journal, along with the "student friendly" translation on the Learning Goals page. Per our conversation regarding parent reflections on the Work Journal Samples: do not worry about this for the first Work Journal. We are going to be discussing this as a staff and deciding what the overall expectation is. I will keep you updated :) Again, I had a wonderful time with all of you today. I feel very lucky to have such a wonderful group of families to work with! Please let me know if you have any questions about work journals, samples, or the project! Also, Don't forget to get me the first Work Journal by Friday!! Robin Hello Hello! This week has been so much fun! We started the "My Place in Time" project and have been having a great time exploring stories, artifacts, and time lines. I have been surprised and excited to see how much knowledge your kids already have on many different aspects of "long ago." We made a time line of Abe Lincoln's life on Mon/Tues and we are going to start reading a short biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder on Thurs/Fri. We will be studying newspapers and creating a newspaper based on her life and times. An interesting home extension might be to spend time looking at newspapers and practice writing newspaper articles. This week we will begin to work on "beginning, middle, and end" during reading. After you have read a story with your child, discuss the order of events and have them create a visual or written representation. Two graphic organizers that you could use: If this seems easy for your child, you can create similar visuals that have more boxes to incorporate more events. You may need to have conversations about what constitutes an "important event." Another interesting home extension might be to have them create comic strips as this is a classic version of "beginning, middle, and end."
In math we have started to do a Problem of the Day. These are word problems that can be used to discuss different addition/ subtraction strategies. Example: June had 6 baseball cards. Ty gave her 11 more baseball cards. How many baseball cards does June have now? I try to emphasize that I want them to show me how they solved the problem, not just the answer. Allow them to work with counters, and encourage drawing visuals. Share with them how you would solve the problem. Change the numbers based on your students level. In writing we have begun writing Narratives. I have spoken to several of you about recreating Writers Workshop at home, and will touch on this at Jumpstart as well. This week's focus is on taking one moment and "stretching" it out. A good strategy to try is to have them tell you the story before they write and ask them questions to help them verbalize the little details of the moment :) I will be seeing most of you at Jumpstart (Wednesday, September 18), and this time will be used to go over Work Journal #2 and answer any questions that have come up. I understand that some of you have more than one child at DVIA, and so I am offering another Work Journal meeting after Jumpstart at 4:00pm in my room. Don't forget that Work Journal #1 is due next week!! I have posted a Work Journal Exemplar on the "Learning Goals" page. Please feel free to reference it in order to improve your Work Journal. I hope that everyone is starting to get into the "back to school" groove :) As always, please feel free to contact me regarding any questions you might have about the class, work journal, or project! See you next week! Robin Hello lovely Core 2 families!
I hope that you had a wonderful Labor Day weekend, with lots of fun and rest! First of all I wanted to tell you that I feel so happy to have your wonderful kiddos in my class. They are so full of wonderful ideas and we have a great time learning together :) I wanted to take some time to talk about what my plans are for the reading time in this class for the next week or two. We are going to be focusing on identifying main ideas and details in fictional texts. For example, this week we will be reading a story called "Down Home at Miss Dessa's," and discussing the main idea and supporting details. We will then create a small table out of paper, where the table top represents the main idea and the legs are the details. Link to table graphic organizer: http://www.brainpopjr.com/readingandwriting/comprehension/mainidea/activity/ You could try repeating this activity with your child using a different book as a springboard, or you could use this graphic organizer as inspiration to make your own graphic organizer :) We will begin to work on our "My Place in Time" project on Monday/Tuesday (Sep 9/10) and will be focusing on exploring what an artifact is, and making timelines based on Abe Lincoln's life. A Few Reminders: -Please don't forget to send your child with a water bottle! It is HOT out lately and we are all needing to stay hydrated! -Jumpstart Day 2 is happening Wednesday, September 18th. This is second day of the two-day Jumpstart program. Since attending both days of Jumpstart is mandatory for families, please be sure to mark this date in your calendar. This will also be our Work Journal meeting for the month, so it should be a productive day! -Emergency Kits are still needed for a few more Core 2 students. Please be sure your child’s emergency kit is placed in the big black bin located outside of the classroom. -I am still working on finding a Work Journal exemplar for you to use (sorry!) but please feel free to stop by and chat about the Work Journal if you are having trouble. Please feel to contact me should you have any questions about class, the work journal and/or work samples, or the first project! Looking forward to another great week! Robin |
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February 2017
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