Game Day Fun!

Today the students were given extra recess time as part of our new Terrific Kid program.  Thank you to Tiki TIki Board Games for providing games for the students to play.  It was so fun to see the students so "enthusiastic" over good old fashioned board games.

This week in math we are focusing on addition and subtraction word problems.  We used words like fewer and more and had to figure out when to add or subtract.  

Our essential question this week in reading was "How can people help out in their community?"  We read a story about a community in  Arizona who painted a mural to beautify their community.  We also worked on finding the author's purpose.  We looked for clues to help us figure out if the author was trying to describe, explain or entertain us.

We started a new unit in science this week"  Properties of Matter.  We read a story about what matter is and then discussed things we already know about matter and what we would like to learn.  They we went on a matter scavenger hunt in the classroom.

Remember, next week is our trip to the zoo for the UNLESS contest.  Please keep in mind that we will be outside during part of the trip and to dress your child for the weather.

Have a great weekend. 

Contraction Surgery

This week Dr. Taylor and Dr. Wells performed their annual contraction surgery.  The students have been learning about contraction in reading.  The students were introduced to the patients: Mr. He Is, Ms. Do Not and Mrs. We Are.  The doctors modeled how to perform surgery on the patients and create contractions from the patients.  

Dr. Wells and Dr. Taylor perform surgery.  Almost lost this patient!!

Mr. He Is came to the doctors to get his "I" removed

Then the students then became the doctors and they performed surgery on patients of their own.

Dr. Dan monitoring the patients in the recovery room.

Our practicum student, Ms. Ferry, did a fun writing lesson with the class.  The students viewed a video of Olaf singing about what happens in the summer.  Then the students wrote about what it would be like if they were a snowman.

We finished up Topic 6 in math.  You should have reviewed and signed your child's math test.  Overall the students performed very well on the test.  Our next unit will be working on word problems using both addition and subtraction.

In science this week, we made another video for our UNLESS contest.  We hung posters about water and conserving water for everyone in the school to see and learn about our cause.

The students took the winter MAP testing this week in both reading and math.  This time we used our classroom Chromebooks!!  All of the scores went up from the fall which was absolutely wonderful!!  Great job class!

Remember school is closed on Monday.  Have a great long weekend!!

Happy New Year

Welcome back to the students and parents!  We started right back where we left off.

We started a new unit in reading about Earth and the amazing things that Earth has.  This week we read about how magnets work and how gravity was discovered.  We learned about Isaac Newton who discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head.

We are still practicing subtracting using place-value.  We did some adding to check our subtracting and some words problems as well.  We will be taking a test next week in math on Topic 6.

We are diligently working on our contest for the Philadelphia Zoo.  This week we went on a water hunt through the school to find any ways we are wasting water.  Many of the students commented on our school water fountain.  We are hoping that maybe we could make a change to that.  Stay tuned.  

In writing, we started a new unit:non fiction writing.  The students brainstormed many different topic ideas and then narrowed their topic down to something or someone they were really interested in learning about and writing a report about.  We will be continuing with these reports for the next several weeks.

With a new month comes our new groups.  Think the students have something else in mind...snow day maybe????