Classroom News
12/4/17
Mrs. Fox and Mrs. Hughes
Email: lindsay.fox@acsgmail.net
Website: claxton.ashevillecityschools.net
Location: Claxton Elementary School, Merrimon Avenue, Asheville, NC, United States
Phone: 828-350-6528
A Look At Our Week
This week our class will be participating in the "Hour of Code" initiative. Ms. Eggett, our Digital Learning Technician will be leading a class on Monday morning, introducing this valuable skill. Our students have already had experience with this when they earned a visit from Dash the Robot a couple of weeks ago.
The Winter Storytelling Festival is on Thursday. Mr. Godleski always finds fantastic storytellers to bring stories to life, I look forward to watching the reactions of your children as they listen to the marvellous tales!
We will be celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah in our classroom, to reflect the cultural traditions of our students.
Writing
This week we will be continuing our work on writing telling and asking sentences, as well as focusing on using describing words with nouns. We will be rolling all of these skills into our Narrative Writing towards the end of the week, as we return to writing true stories from our lives.
Math
We start each day with a Morning Meeting, which often features a lot of Math content: recognizing and recording numbers, counting by 1s and 10s, identifying 2D shapes and describing them using their attributes etc.
Later in the day we have a full Math Workshop, where we focus more deeply on a topic. We will be concentrating on Measurement this week in our workshop - measuring using nonstandard measurement tools such as gingerbread men, paper clips, sticks, and cubes. We will be measuring shoes, bodies, tables, and presents! We will be comparing measurements, and some vocabulary that we will be using is: short, shorter, shortest, long, longer, longest, tall, taller, tallest.
Reading
We have many opportunities each day to work on our reading. During our Shared Reading time we are reading nursery rhymes, the name chart, poems and "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin Jr.. This is a great way to work on reading strategies, and fluency. We have continued this work during Reader's Workshop where they have been reading their own folders of songs, poems and sight words to themselves and each other. They are using their "Pointer Power" and their "Reread Power" and their knowledge of sight words.
During Literacy Centers your child is either engaged in the: Word Work center (sight word work), ABC center - working with first and last sounds of words, Read to Someone center - reading showcased books with a partner, Listen to Reading - listening to Science nonfiction books on an iPad app (this week they'll be learning about animal adaptations to Winter), or Writing - this month they'll be writing Holiday cards to their friends/families etc.!
We will also be reading "The Polar Express" by Chris Allsburg, to prepare for our upcoming event.
Snack Drive!
PBIS Grade Level Reward - The Polar Express
Children may wear Pyjamas that day, and bring in a pillow. We will be serving hot chocolate to them, and singing holiday songs too.
Holiday Meal and Gingerbread House Decorating
Lunch times will be sent out this week, the gingerbread houses will follow.