Earth Week

In honor of Earth Day, we took this week to finish up our unit on plants and learn about ways we can keep the earth clean and healthy. After reading books about the 3Rs- recycling, reducing, and reusing- we created an anchor chart together about how we can care for our planet. We also made earth books that we hung around the classroom to remind us how important is to take good care of our one and only home!

On Friday, we got together with our Big Friends and did an activity together centered around ways we can reduce, reuse, and recycle materials. We also took some time to present our at-home recycling projects to the class. 

Check out how each of us reused or recycled something to make something new!

Flower Vase

Dog Food Scoop

Boat (that really floats!)

Pencil Holder

 Bottle Rocket

Flower Vase

Guitar

Birdfeeder

Play Castle

Flower/Pencil Holder

Bowling Game

Dollhouse (with a crayon box fireplace that lit up!)

Birdfeeder (with some excellent writing attached!)

Mask

Flower Vase

Replica of a Beach House

Marshmallow Flinger

Flower Holder

Play House

Bear Container

Be sure to check out the notice that went home Friday regarding Screen-Free day next week. I'd love to see everyone join in and participate along with me! :)

Persuasive Letters- Listen In!

I am so excited to share all of our hard work in writer's workshop with you! This week, we chose one of our persuasive letters to revise and edit with a partner. Remember, these topics were self-selected based on what each student needed or wanted to see change. Partners did all of the revising work with each other. We fixed up our writing and made changes we felt would make our writing even better. Today, we recorded ourselves reading our "published" letters! Check them out by clicking the play button below- I am so proud of what great letter writers everyone is becoming!

Science and Math Update!

In math, we have been doing a lot of work around place value and solving number stories. We have also been learning some new games too. Here, partners are doing an activity called Dice Tally Record to figure out which dice sums occur most often.

We have also been doing math workshop a few times a week! This time gives us opportunities to explore math games on the computer, complete independent practice activities, and play games with partners. This also allows me to work with small groups on particular skills with your child.

In science, we are continuing our learning about plants. The students have been recording observations in their lima bean journals each day. Most of our seed coats have split, which means sprouts are coming! We also did this interactive writing piece to identify what each part of a plant does and what it needs to grow:

Just a reminder that recycling projects will be due the Friday we come back from vacation! :)

We're L-O-V-I-N-G Persuasive Writing!

I can't even begin to tell you how much we are loving our persuasive writing unit! The students have completely knocked my socks off with some fantastic writing! It is music to my ears to hear little whispers of "Yesss!!" when I announce that it's writer's workshop time. :)

Here's what we've been up to! We learned about how we can turn our opinions into letters and try to persuade or convince someone to either do something, see our point of view, or give us something. At first, most students were writing about something they wanted or needed, but now, many have realized they can also think about larger changes to help a community, the school, or even the world. Imagine my delight when one of our classmates raised his hand and said, "You mean maybe I can make a difference with my words- like Martin Luther King did?" I can't WAIT to share with you some of these letters. One of my writers is crafting a letter to a road building company persuading them to fix the road his Papa lives on before his hip surgery. He's worried his Papa will get hurt when he's out for walks trying to recover. I've got another writer asking President Obama to find ways to prevent bullying in schools- and these are ideas students came up with all on their own! Another student wrote a very convincing letter asking her dad to give her art lessons every Saturday. I could go on and on about all the wonderful letters, but stay tuned because I am going to try and post a "proud piece" from each writer for you very soon! :)

Here are some class-created charts we have been using to help us craft our letters:

Here are some snapshots of students in action. At the end of each writer's workshop block, we set aside time to share our letters with a partner to get advice and suggestions for revisions:

Stay tuned for more to come!

Reading Across Genres

In reader's workshop, we are continuing to read across genres in our book clubs. Club members are doing a great job discussing their topics and jotting down their good thinking. Here are some anchor charts we've added to and created in our mini lessons:

Each group also started creating a word bank to collect new, interesting, or important words and vocabulary that have to do with their topic. We just started this, but you can see what a few groups have already added:

After vacation, students will be choosing another topic they would like to read more about. We will reconfigure our groups and continue our learning across genres with new topics and group members!

Plants!

Today we started our new integrated science unit on plants! The week after vacation, we will be doing a lot of activities centered around Earth Day- so what better way to segway in than learning all about what plants and trees need!

As part of today's morning work, we took some time to reflect on what we already know about plants. We jotted our ideas down on post-its and started this thinking chart:

This led to a discuss about questions we have and things we want to learn more about. To jumpstart our new learning, I read From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons, a favorite nonfiction author in our classroom!

After our reading and discussion, it was time to put 21 little green thumbs to work! We each created paper greenhouse to grow lima beans in. Check it out!

The students will track the progress of their bean plants in a growth journal. Each day they will draw and write about how their little plants are growing and changing each day. I can't wait to watch them grow! :)

Genre Book Clubs

This week, the students worked hard reading and talking with their book club members. Here's some of the topics they are reading about:

I am so impressed watching the book clubs in action! The students are doing some excellent thinking and talking with each other. Our mini lessons this week will be centered on comparing information in fiction books to nonfiction books, making inferences across books, and collecting new words about a given topic.

Literacy Update

Hi everyone!

I wanted to update you on what we have been working on during our literacy block. In writer's workshop, we started our new opinion writing and persuasive letter writing unit. We talked about how our opinions matter and we have been working hard to get these ideas down during our writing time.

Today we did some talking about persuasion and how we can try to convince others to agree with our opinions. We read the funny story I Wanna Iguana and talked about how the little boy in the story states reasons to persuade his mom to let him get an iguana. Then, we brainstormed topics we might want to persuade someone about. We are going to continue reading more mentor texts to learn how we can persuade or convince someone and start writing some persuasion letters of our own!

In reader's workshop, we also started a new unit involving reading across genres. We will continue to work in book clubs, but this time, we are reading many types of books about one topic! Book club baskets are filled with fiction, realistic fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc. that all relate to one topic.Everyone will get the chance to dive into all kinds of books about a topic. Yesterday, we chose topics of interest and determined our new book club groups. Today we did a lot of talk centered around how to determine what type of genre a book is. 

More to come on that as we get deeper into our unit! Just a reminder to send back spring pictures that you would like to return. I also sent home a new book order that will be due next Wednesday, April 10th. 

Have a good night!