Hargadon's Happenings
Here's What's Happening in Room 76
September 12-16
What Did We Do This Week?
We worked on making connections this week! We sorted words into categories to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent. We also defined words by category using one or more key attributes. It was fun to identify real-life connections between words
and their use. We came up with many different ideas for words that we use everyday. Our phonics skills focused on short a and segmenting these words. Everyone did a great job on our first word sort assessment!
Our new word wall words for the week were: you, that, was, of.
This week we focused on writing small moment “seed” stories. We listed different “pumpkin” topics we could write about: vacations, birthdays, recess, and summer. For each of these big “pumpkin” topics, we listed smaller “seed” stories that we could pull from them: getting lost on vacation, opening a favorite birthday gift, falling down at recess, making lemonade in summer. We practiced sorting story topics as either “pumpkin” or “seed” with a partner. These small moments are what we want to focus on and stretch out into our stories. As we wrote, we continued to follow the steps of how to write a story: plan (something that happened to you or something you do), touch, tell, sketch, write and revise (ask who, what, when, where, why, how questions to add more detail to your story). Don't forget that your child needs to complete the inspiration heart map of people, places, and ideas that are important to them. These will be included in our writing workshop folders to use when needed!
In math this week, we measured fish and determined if they were "keepers" or not. We also ordered objects by size and worked on visually showing this on paper.
Our math focus points this week included:
*measuring lengths using different-sized units
*developing accurate measurement techniques
*understanding that measurements of the same lengths should be the same when they are measured twice or by different people using the same unit
*understanding that measuring an object using different-length units will results in different measurements
*understanding the meaning of smallest to tallest and tallest to shortest when ordering objects
We read Pokey and the Spelling Test, the third story in The Seven Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey. This chapter focuses on the third habit, Put First Things First. Putting first things first means planning your time around the most important, BIG things in your life. Then, you can get to the little things that take your time. We discussed the definition of prioritizing: putting the most important things first and why this is important. We then created a prioritizer. Students cut and sorted scenarios by priority. We also read The Little Read Hen and discussed Hen’s goal and how she prioritized throughout the story. As a culminating activity, students completed a “Work First, Then Play” page to show how they prioritize in their own lives.
Important Notes
We’ve started classroom jobs as a way to help build our classroom community and become independent workers! Please ask your child about our different jobs and what they were in charge of this week!
When emailing me about your child being absent, please be sure to include Nurse Theer on the email as well. Her email address is theers@avoca37.org.
Enjoy your weekend!
Looking Ahead
September 30 - Monthly Homework Calendar and Reading Log due
October 3 - No School, Rosh HashanahOctober 10 - No School, Yom Kippur
October 12 - No School, Columbus Day