Monday, September 10, 2012

Happy Monday!

I hope you all had a great weekend! I accomplished a goal that I've had for a very long time...I completed my first triathlon yesterday. Ms. Lisa and I swam, biked, and ran it together. What an experience!

This week's IA: PE
Next week's IA: Art

*Tonight is the first night for math homework. Homework will come home every Monday-Thursday from now on. I expect homework to come back to school the following day. If your child is really struggling with the homework, please don't push them to complete it. I don't want it to be frustrating. If this happens, please just write me a note on the homework. That way, I'll know that I need to recover a concept with your child. Please remember that you can see what homework your child needs to do on the homework tab of this blog. Thanks so much!

Reader's Workshop
We continue to learn about how we can use our background experiences to help us understand why characters do what they do in stories and why an author wrote a story. We are currently reading examples of published personal narratives because we can connect something from the story to something from our lives. That's what makes personal narratives so much fun to read (and write)! Another reason we are reading these books is because they are helping us write our own personal narratives. A Chair for my Mother, Some Birthday!, and Owl Moon are just a few of the titles we've read during Reader's Workshop.

Writer's Workshop
We are learning more and more about personal narratives. We've brainstormed ideas for stories we could write. We know these have to be true stories about our lives. One way you could help your child at home with his or her personal narrative is to tell your child about an experience from their lives that lives past the moment. This is something that should be important enough to your family, that you want to have a record of it. We are studying personal narratives and want to show students why some experiences are worth remembering and sharing.
Today we looked at how published authors started their personal narratives. This helped us come up with interesting ways to start our stories. Here are some examples of how students chose to start their stories: 

It's kind of difficult to see, but this writer chose to start her story with sound effects. 

 So did this writer. 

Another excited thing we started in Writer's Workshop is Kindergarten Buddies. Some of you may have read about this in your child's Weekend Family Message Journal. We will get together with Ms. Jody's class every other Friday. The kids are all so excited to share their writing with an audience. We will also be doing some projects together this year. 

Math

Every Friday in math is Math Game Day. This provides a chance for children to learn basic math skills in a fun way. A popular game right now is Addition Top-It. This can be played at home with a deck of cards. Ask your child to teach you how to play. This will help your child get fast with math addition facts. 

Expedition

This week in Expedition, we are learning all about community. This is starting to build some background knowledge for our first case study. Stay tuned to hear what our first case study will be!