Podcasts of Biographies: Day 2

Here are 3 more podcasts that were recorded today. Our writers today even wanted to try adding background music! I hope to have all finished/recorded/uploaded by tomorrow!  Enjoy :)

Biography of Colton: By Joe

Biography of Joe: By Colton

Biography of Destiny: By Jasmine

2013 Inquiry Groups - Day 1

Here is a short video capturing our first day in our animal inquiry groups. Everyone was very excited to meet their group members and dive into their research resources!

First, I modeled what researchers sound like and look like when they are wondering and learning about a topic. Next, the learners explored different inquiry tubs full of books and printed articles about animals they may be interested in. Each group will also get a chance to research either on the iPad on a safe-website or on the smartboard.

Then, they wrote down their top 3 choices and I organized the groups based on who would work well together, interest, etc.

Finally, they met in their groups for the first time and explored their resources at their fingertips.

We will track our learning and then taking the information and organize it into an informational book. Our final project will be a creation using a digital tool, such as an iMovie, a podcast, an interactive published book, a song, a play, etc....the possibilities are endless and we will be learning different digital tools to use together!

Dear families,

This week we learned about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and what an important leader he was to children and adults alike. We described what we thought Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream meant to us and compared his dreams for the United States of America with our dreams for ourselves as we grow up. We then wrote down our 'dream words' that we hoped to experience, feel or be a part of for the rest of our lives. Finally, we worked with an iPad app called "Skitch" (free download for any with iPads/iPods/iPhones at home) where you can take a graphic and describe it with text - kind of a visual graphic organizer surrounding ourselves. After teaching the class how to use the app, for the most part, they were able to manipulate the tools and text boxes themselves.  Mrs. Rottschafer was also a wonderful help in guiding us through this 1:1 process. It was inspiring to see how quickly their brains can understand and apply sequential steps with technology.

Enjoy our "Dream Words"  

Eva

Kinsey

Meeka

Brylee

Natalie

Luke

Destiny

Riley 

Reese

Shelby

Keyland

Jasmine

Mason

Ethan

Casey

Joe

Christian

Colton

Martin

Christy 

Haylee

Nick

Sam

Deaglan

Zack

Sight Words, Math Strategies and Spooky Skeleton Hiccups!

The past few weeks have been a lot of independent practice and hopefully application of sight words we have learned! As we learn about patience, working together, sharing and kindness we can also incorporate fun! We have been playing different Sight Word "games" to help with  your child's fluency in writing and spelling Sight Words. These games help with muscle memory of letter formation and spelling of words. We will add and learn different games throughout the year!

Ian and Joe are practicing their fluency in writing and spelling our Safari Sight Words!

Lindsey and Lexi make a great team!

In Math, we have learned strategies for counting on or counting all in addition. Allison is modeling counting all, by drawing all the cirlces from the first partner, then all the circles from the second partner to find the total. We are learning that by trusting the greater number first and counting on with cirlces with the smaller partner saves time and helps our fluency in addition. We are trying to move away from using fingers as that can cause silly mistakes and is not a great way for children to recognize partners and totals in addition and subtraction. Until your child can solve addition and subtraction with automaticity, encourage them to try the counting all or counting on strategy, depending what they are more comfortable with right now.
We've also been learning about vocabulary words for addition. We've learned that all these words mean the same thing as add: sum, total, altogether, increase, combined, plus, both and in all.
We will learn subtraction vocabulary in the coming weeks.
Our next unit in math is based on story problems and solving for missing partner or total based on the information provided. I will be posting some examples throughout the chapter. I will also post some examples of counting on for you to review with your firstie!

Allison modeling and explaining how to solve math equations by showing her work with counting on with circles.

Skeleton Hiccups - pattern story!

Art Project/Writing Response Sample

We read a story called Skeleton Hiccups and recognized the author's purpose was to entertain us and the genre was fiction and fantasty writing. We then created our own skeleton's and answered the prompt: "I would get rid of a skeleton's hiccups by..." It was a lot of fun and great practice for conventions of writing!