Pine Class News
January 31st, 2016
In reading this week we focused on looking for ways that authors help readers to know HOW to read.
Clues that Help Readers Know How to Read:
-Punctuation at the end (. ! ?)
-Punctuation in the middle (, ...)
-Special Print (bold, Italic, BIG)
-dialogue tags (" ")
-pictures
The Pine class had a great visit with some educators from the New Victory Theater as a follow-up to seeing the Velveteen Rabbit.
We used our imagination and worked with partners, sharing a white piece of fabric to create and act out all sorts of things!
For Project Time, Kirsten made a beautiful map showing Brooklyn 400 years ago.
Groups continued to work on making all the parts of our own 3D model of Brooklyn.
The coastline group made sandy, rocky surfaces and cat tails.
Little trees and plants were created for the wetlands and the forests.
The freshwater group worked with paper mache, making the topographical aspects of the map before adding the water.
In math we continued to work on problem solving and representing our work with tools and in our new Math Notebooks.
Lots of beautiful sewing!
In writing this week we continued to work on finishing our stories and then going back to revise and add better endings. This coming week we hope to start publishing some of this great work!
Pines created Magnatile structures involving lots of great collaboration!
1/2 group trips make for efficient one-on-one assessment time!
On Friday Paul took the Chickadees (1/2 of the class) to the Museum of Natural History to see the Native American exhibits while the Sparrows (the other 1/2) worked independently at school and Anna worked on their one-on-one reading assessments. Then the Sparrows did some great projects they'd chosen to incorporate some of what they'd learned about Native Americans during their visit to the museum last week.
This coming Friday the Sparrows will go to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Coney Island Exhibit and the Chickadees will be at school to crank through the assessments. It is very helpful to have extra adults at school during this time to help with the independent work and on the field trip extra adults are always a plus. So please let us know if you're interested in helping out!
The Chickadees studied lots of artifacts and dioramas at the Museum of Natural History.
Back at Compass, the Sparrows created beautiful replicas of long houses based on what they saw at the Museum of Natural History last week.
We set-up the warp on our big beautiful Compass loom!
...counting by tens was useful for us here as we tied off the warp after every ten rows.
Kirsten helped us start lots of beautiful individual weaving projects.
Replica tools were made with sticks, clay, and string.
The Pines were asked to do some Terrarium consulting in the Maple room as they were beginning to make their own.
Anna received a beautiful and thoughtful "Baby Advice Book" with pages written by each Pine and Compass staff members.
Anna and Stephan are thankful for the guidance in important areas such as --what to feed a baby ("pizza & candy"), what names to choose (so many to choose from!), and how to change diapers ("take the baby outside"). The book is still in the classroom if you'd like to come take a look!
Extra Clothes Reminder
Please send your child with a ziplock bag of extra clothes. ESPECIALLY NOW! Wet outdoor conditions make an extra pair of socks or pants a GREAT thing to have around.
Contact Information:
Paul - paul@brooklyncompass.org
Anna - anna@brooklyncompass.org
Feel free to reach out at any time with questions, concerns, comments!
We love hearing from our Pine families!