Week of September 25-29

Hello Room 7!

I hope you all enjoyed the weekend! We've had a busy couple of weeks in all areas. We have been deep in the study of similes and students are getting adept at writing them and recognizing them in literature. Students wrote similes about how they feel while doing a favorite activity and we've begun a class book modeled after the book Quick As a Cricket  by Jan Brown. We've also been learning and talking a lot about how to "grow" our math brains and learning to share our thinking about numbers and problem solving.

This week we will begin rotating classrooms for RTI (reading instruction). Students will have an hour of reading instruction Monday-Thursday. In class, students now have personal book boxes and will learn how to select books at their "just right" level for in-class reading. I'm looking forward to having the one-on-one time during RTI with each grade level for math and certain areas of grammar and language wall.

Math: 1st: We are continuing our study of addition and using various strategies to solve addition problems and will move into our study of fact families and subtraction as well. We are also learning how to show our work/strategies used when answering word problems. We will begin learning the Read, Draw, Write approach to solving word problems.

2nd: We are learning  about sums and differences to 20, how to use a number rack in solving problems, and doing an application problem each day that requires students to use the Read, Draw, Write approach: read to unpack the problem and find out what information is necessary to solve it, draw to help solve the problem and show your strategies, write an equation representing the problem, and respond in a complete sentence to answer the question thoroughly.

Writing: We have written several drafts of the ideas we gathered the last couple of weeks and have learned to add characters and dialog into our personal narratives. Students have now chosen one of those drafts to take through to publication. Students will begin to revise their original drafts to add a strong beginning that hooks their reader through action, dialog, and/or setting. They will learn the strategy of  writing the "Show, Don't Tell" way when describing strong emotions, how to add more to their writing by using "twin sentences", and how to write a strong ending that stays close to the "Big Thing That Happened" in their stories.

Our Word Wall Words this week are:      WHY     WHEN     WHERE      WHICH      MAY


Have a great week!

Caryn