Hello Families!
It's been a wonderful January in the Dragonfly Class and I am excited to share with you some of our newest learning adventures. The students have kept up with their enthusiastic attitudes for learning and it has been fun settling back into the swing of things after the new year. We had a great visit from the SPCA who accepted our donation from 2D's Got Talent! Wolfie the ferret found time to come as well and made for an extra fun Friday in our classroom. We also had an author visit where we got to make some pretty artistic book marks that resemble the illustrations in the story.
Math
We have started learning about arrays. These are the beginning stages of multiplication (that's right, I said it!) and the students are so excited. This week we focused on what equal groups of objects look like and how we can organize them in different ways. By working with rows and columns, we discovered that there are ways to organize these equally. From here, we will be working with repeated addition and how it relates to equal groups. Students will create arrays of their own and learn to add equal groups. Linking the multiplication piece will be an extra challenge!
Reading
We are looking at the books we read, as authors. We have started to notice the ways that authors intend us to read their books. This week we focused on dialogue tags and how they make us change our voice. We also talked about how fluency is a just right reading pace. Now that the students are reading more easily, it is easy to read too fast, which does not mean it's fluent! We continue to work on our independent reading goals as well.
Writing
We have entered our lab report unit and it has taken off with a few "how to" books. We began writing in steps, with important details and materials. We also learned about transition words such as first, next, then, after, finally, and why they are important in this type of writing. The students did a great job with this and really enjoyed teaching others to do things they are really good at. They realized they had to add many more details than they were expecting! I think we have some future "how to" youtubers on our hands!
Science
We have dived into our matter unit. We have talked about solids, liquids, and gases. We learned that atoms make up all matter and act differently within the three types. We have explored our room and looked at it in a different light when it comes to matter. Our next steps are to have experiments for each type of matter. We will be writing lab reports alongside the experiments.
Upcoming Events
We have an author visit on Friday with Mary Preble, we are very excited! Book order forms will be sent home Monday if you are interested in ordering a book.
The Mother-Son Dance is Friday January, 26th at 6:30.
School & Home Talk:
What are the rules in your new word sort? (They are tricky!)
What is a transition word in "how to" writing?
What was your favorite part of the SPCA visit?
What kind of artwork did the author have in her famous book?
Draw 3 equal groups of 4, as an array.
What did Martin Luther King Jr. do for our country?
