January and the New Year!

Reading

We have been focusing on some comprehension skills as a whole class.  During class read aloud time we have talked about the story structure and key details in our stories.  We have spent time focusing on characters, settings, problem and solution, main events and also authors message. We read Owl Moon and Stelleluna and compared the settings in each story.  We also discussed the authors message in the story Stellaluna.  The students worked in collaborative groups to show these aspects of the stories through pictures and writing.  We also were able to share their work and responses to the whole class.  Writing about our reading is a great way to strengthen comprehension skills.  We also work on these story elements during our reading group time as well.  

Writers workshop

We finished up our work with small moment stories.  We have "published" one of our favorite stories and have added these books into our classroom library in a special bin.  Now we have started working on our non fiction unit of writing.  We are all very excited to start this and write using a different voice because now we are the experts and are writing to teach the reader about something.  We are off to a great start so far.  I love seeing all the great topics they know so much about.

Science

We continue to watch our plant cuttings and potatoes grow.  The kids are amazed at how much these plants have grown and love watching how they transform.  We have also started our unit on solids and liquids.  We started with 20 solids and have been comparing and sorting these solids by different qualities.  We have sorted by the objects which ones roll and stack and also by which ones sink and float in water.  We will be comparing these objects more and also continuing with our liquids portion of the unit.

Math

We are wrapping up a unit working with true false equations.  During this unit we learned that the equals sign means the same as and we have to balance both sides of the equation so each side has the same total.   We have also been adding equations with three addends.

 Thank you to our moms who made our holiday party so wonderful!