Sunday, October 29, 2017

Calling All Pumpkins! Calling All Flashlights! ๐Ÿ”ฆ๐ŸŽƒ

Hello Everyone! 
I hope everyone had a great weekend! My weekend consisted of moving!๐Ÿ“ฆ 
We are entering into a busy month in the Dragonfly classroom. As we celebrate and wrap up the month of October, we need a little help! Please remember that pumpkins are due tomorrow- October 30th with the stems cut out! This needs to be done at home because I don't have anything sharp enough to do it in the classroom! We are having our classroom celebration, including pumpkin math and pumpkin decorating on Tuesday, October 31st. We are also planning to do some flashlight reading during Reader's Workshop on Tuesday- please send a flashlight (if you have one available at home) in for your child to use during reading that day! 
A Few More Reminders 
Conferences start this week! Reminder emails with your scheduled date and time will be sent through Sign Up Genius! We have an early release day on Wednesday November, 1st and Wednesday November, 8th due to conferences!
Our Learning
We have been so busy in our classroom over the last few weeks. As if the "stuffed" Friday folders weren't enough, you are about to see so many of our latest learning experiences in this week's pictures. To name a few of our recent events, we have been experimenting with performance tasks in math, strengthening our understanding of place value, and recording our thinking through writing and "selfies" on the iPads. In writing we have been writing expert books using our non fiction skills to teach others about things we are already good at. We will soon be writing non fiction books about the topics we are researching during our non fiction reading time. You guessed it...in reading we have been researching and reading a ton of non fiction books. We have been using the features of the text to help us navigate and we've been paying attention to the key words for each topic. There is no other way to say it.. Science ROCKED this week. We learned all about erosion. We played the role of erosion twice- once in a "mystery science" about sand at the beach and the other time outside with geodes trying to figure out what was inside! We have also been exploring a lot with artwork to help make our learning come alive!

School➡Home Talk: Ask your dragonfly!
Why is there sand at the beach?
How come there is purple sand at a beach in California?
What is our chant for even numbers?
What type of leaf animal did you make?
What animal did you research for your "eye" project? What would be it be like if you looking through that animal's eyes?
What are researching right now in Reader's Workshop?
What is your expert writing book about?
What makes a nonfiction different than a fiction book?