Autobiographies

Greetings,

When you all came for conferences we looked at the tremendous growth there has been in writing this year. We recently finished our narrative writing unit where we wrote auto-biographies. Students worked very hard on this unit and completed a first draft for each of their entries. Students used an editing process known as "Check Up On It" where they reviewed both independently and in small groups to edit their own and one another's writing. Students are now quite familiar with editing writing and know to look for capitalization, punctuation, logical illustration and spacing between words. Students also continue work in evaluating the positive aspects of ones writing. We are strongly  emphasizing the importance in identifying something kind or something we connect to through our and each other's writing. I have added clips of students reading aloud their work, enjoy!

Catching Up

Hello everyone,

I am sorry it has been so long since our last update; we have been hard at work! Since returning from vacation students have been working diligently to master basic addition and subtraction. We are examining the commonalities and differences that exist between these two operations. Students have enjoyed discovering the fact families such as 2+3=5, 5-3=2, 5-2=3, etc.

In literacy students continue to make great strides in their independent and group reading skills. We practice reading independently while applying phonics skills such as the “Hh Brothers” and having inquiry based reading discussions that require us to return to the text for evidence. This is helping to build stronger, thoughtful and aware reading habits.

Our opinion-writing unit began last week, students are excited to share their opinions on a range of topics through their writing. Striking up a conversation at home about opinions vs. facts would be a wonderful way to support our learning this week!

Last week we had a visit from Junk Man, a musician who literally creates instruments out of junk. It was inspiring to see so many creative ideas in how to use recycled materials. Students were thrilled by the performance and continue to make their own ‘classroom’ or ‘recess’ music using pencils, sticks, rocks, etc. It was a memorable day so be sure and ask your child about it if they have not already shared!