January 22, 2016
Dear Families,
This week we
learned about community helpers. We
connected community helpers, who help our communities, to Martin Luther King
Jr., who helped our world to be a better place.
The children had a tremendous amount of background knowledge about
community helpers; several children know community helpers or even have them in
their family! We read non-fiction books
about firefighters, police officers, and mail carriers. We also watched a short video about community
helpers, goods, and services. The
children labeled pictures of police officers or firefighters and added captions
to their pictures.
During our non-fiction read alouds,
we focused on the concept that non-fiction books teach us information. Before reading, we thought about what we
already knew; while we read we repeatedly thought to ourselves “I knew that,”
“I didn’t know that,” or “I thought I knew something, and now I have to change
my thinking.” We recorded new learning
as a class, and we celebrated our thinking.
On Friday we headed up to the
computer lab to have a turn with
Raz-Kids. The children practiced
reading just-right non-fiction books online and enjoyed earning points towards
the “star zone.” Please consider
visiting https://www.kidsa-z.com/main/Login
to help your child access Raz-Kids at home.
When you visit the site, you can find our class by entering mkeeneam or
mkeenepm in the teacher username bar. Your
child’s password is his/her initials.
Raz-Kids is a terrific tool for helping children to make progress in
reading, and the children are welcome to record the Raz-Kids texts in their
reading logs.
This week the children worked with
pattern blocks in partners. They used
shapes to build hexagons in six different ways.
The goals were for the children to learn that they can use small shapes
to build a bigger shape, and that they can break a bigger shape down into
smaller shapes. Children were interested
that they could use trapezoids, blue rhombuses, and triangles to build the
hexagon, but that they could not use the tan rhombuses or squares.
Next week we will have workboard
and guided reading. We will focus many
activities around Ezra Jack Keats, The
Snowy Day. Enjoy the new snow this
weekend!
Take care,
Meg Keene and Andrea McCarthy
Books We Read:
·
A Very
Busy Firehouse, by Alyse Sweeney
·
Police
Officers on the Go!, by Alyse Sweeney
·
We Need
Mail Carriers
Lively Letters:
·
Tracking / Tapping and Sliding Sounds – words
with “King E”
Handwriting Without Tears
·
New Letters: G, Q
Sight Words:
·
Review: go, so, no, we, he, see, the, am, an,
can, and, like, my, a, I
