Maple Room News
3.9 - 3.13
Exploration
Children have continued to compose more elaborate structures using unit blocks. It's exciting to see the progress they've made in this regard. Take a look at some of the structures in our room the next time you have time. There are some extraordinary representations of symmetry, creativity and symbolism.
Hollow blocks has continued to be used to assemble rocket ships. Students have spent at least an hour of each day this week in space. Zero gravity, oh what a discovery.
Writing has also been a popular choice during exploration as of late.
Reading Workshop
We began a brand new reading unit this weekend. Now, that we are a class full of reading teachers, we are starting to deepen our understanding of the importance of books. The Maples understand that when we read stories, we can laugh, cry, and make connections to the beautiful characters that we are meeting. They also know that non-fiction, or informational texts, help us learn new things or get more information about the topics that we already know something about. Our new unit is called: Learning about Ourselves and our World--Reading for Information.
This week, we focused on looking closely and noticing more in the books that we read.
These are some things that you can remind your Maple to be working on at home as they read independently and with you!
Readers look closely and ask questions and point and talk so that we can learn as much as possible from our books!
Reading partner notice details on a page and then ask each other questions about those details. We might ask, “I wonder why…” or “How does…” or “What is this?”
When readers learn from our books, we can report all of the interesting facts we learn to others who want to learn them. Readers can be reporters, bringing important news about the facts we learn to our partners.
Our sight words for this week: now, of, ran, put sat
Writing Workshop
We began a new writing unit on Monday: Writing for Readers. We began this unit by celebrating how much we have all grown as writers. We are all experimenting with writing sentences, adding details to our drawings, and planning our writing out before we put the actual words down on paper.
On Monday, we looked closely at our How-To pieces. We realized that some of our pieces of writing were very difficult to read. After trying to read through all of our work, we separated our pieces of writing into an "easy to read pile" and a "hard to read pile." We came back as a class and shared what made our writing difficult to read, and what made it easy.
Here were some of our ideas:
Hard to Read:
Our letters were "all over the place"
Didn't use finger spaces
Letters didn't match the sounds we heard
Easy to Read:
We used finger spaces between words
Drew pictures to match the words
Wrote sentences
Sounded out words
We are starting to understand that if we can't read our own writing, then our readers won't be able to either. We need to make our writing as clear as possible for our writers.
Math Workshop
We continued playing Part-Whole Bingo this week. Students worked systematically to record their combinations clearly using symbols, digits, and number sentences. The Maples are becoming increasing more independent while playing this fantastic mathematical game. We'll continue to explore it in varying capacity throughout the remainder of the year.
Towards the end of our week, we explored a new math activity: Number Stories. As a class, we read a number story (word problem) together. There is always a question to think about at the end of the story. This was the story this week:
There was a plate of 10 vegetables. There were some peas and some carrots. What are all the combinations of peas and carrots that you can make?
Children used their understanding of early number-sense and combinations to solve for this problem. We'll continue to work with number stories in the weeks and months to come.
Sharing Cultural and Family Traditions
Please click on the link below to sign up for one 30 minute time slot if you've not already done so. We really look forward to learning more about your children through all of you.
Book Baggies
Your Maple will be bringing their book baggies home every night. The books that they will be bringing home are on their independent level. Maples should be reading for 20 minutes each night. When the Maples are done reading, they can tie the handles of their baggies into a loose bow and put it in their backpack. This will help keep all of their books and tools safe inside their baggies.
Each morning, Maples will place their book baggie in their reading bin. When it is time for private reading, they will get their book baggies out again and start reading.
We will be repeating this process everyday! We have done a lot of practice with this in school and your child should we taking responsibility of their baggie. Please let us know if you need any more information about this. Thank you for your support.