Field Trip to Fullersburg Woods was fantastic!
We traveled to the DuPage County forest preserve to see how a natural resource such as Sugar Maple trees are tapped for their sap and turned into maple syrup. This trip supported our social studies Economics theme. The students enjoyed the experience. Thank you to Carl Bade for chaperoning this trip!
Social Studies
We dove into our Economics theme this week by learning about needs, wants, technology, saving, and many other concepts related to economics, or the working world. The students are reading the social studies text and learning how to find definitions for key vocabulary words by looking around the bold or highlighted words in the text. We are having many fabulous conversations about this topic! I hope you are hearing about it at home!
Reading & Social Studies
Last week, the children finished their research project for Black History month. Their work is fantastic, and I hope you enjoyed reading their projects during parent-teacher conferences. We continue to read January's Sparrow, by Patricia Polacco. The children are using all the strategies we've discussed for reading fiction during this work. They are writing their thinking on a "thinking strip." With a thinking strip, the children have room to write evidence from the text to support their thinking. What's important is not only WHAT they are thinking, but WHY they are thinking this. We have amazing discussions about this fantastic book. The children are really becoming deep thinkers as they read!
This week, the children read a story called The Goat in the Rug by Charles L. Blood, Martin Link, and Nancy Winslow Parker. This story is a narrative nonfiction selection about a Navajo weaver who sheared her goat for its wool, or mohair, then dyed it, spun it, and wove it into a rug. This story reinforces our Economics social studies theme, because it shows how people take natural resources and use them to make products for sale. The children discovered that making a rug from goat’s wool is very time consuming, and this makes hand-made Navajo rugs scarce. We talked about how the Navaho weaver is a producer of goods, and the students made a flow chart to show the steps the weaver followed in producing the rug. The children are also working together to weave potholders from looms using cotton loops.
Writing Workshop
We continued working on opinion writing the past two weeks. The children have learned the most convincing letters state a clear opinion (Pinky and Rex is a fantastic book!), giving a specific reason (The character, Pinky and Rex, really care about one another.), then supporting it with examples from the text (For example, when Pinky was sad Rex tried many things to cheer him up.) I hope you enjoyed reading their published letters at parent-teacher conferences.
This week the students began writing nominations for book awards. For example, they chose a book they felt strongly about and wrote what a judge might need to know to give that book an award. We brainstormed awards they thought their books might deserve, such as Best Book About History for Kids Award, Laugh Out Loud Award, Most Colorful Pictures Award, etc, I am very impressed with their growth in opinion writing since we started this unit!
Math
Last week, the students finished up the first investigation in Unit 4. They organized and represented data, and they learned the conventions of picture graphs, bar graphs, and Venn diagrams. This week, we began the second investigation in Unit 4. Students worked with numerical data as they collected information about the number of pockets worn by their classmates and the number of teeth lost by second graders and other elementary-age students. They organized and represented numerical data, and they learned the conventions of line plots. The children are having a lot of fun with these concepts!
Word Work
Last week’s word sort was the last of our study of r-controlled vowels. The children discovered that /ur/ says the engine sound, or rrrrrrrrrrrrr, just like the /er/ and /ir/ spelling we’ve already discussed. This makes spelling very challenging, and requires the children to use their eyes and ears to spell words. They must use their eyes to memorize if a word makes the rrrrrrrrrrrr sound with /ur/, /ir/ or /er/. They must also listen for sounds in words so they can try different spelling patterns, then see what looks correct! The children compared the /ur/ pattern with /ur_e/, which also says rrrrrrrrrr, and /-ure/ which makes the long u sound. Some students also learned that /ear/ can also say rrrrrrrrr, and -ere, ear, and eer make the long e sound.
This week, the children compared words that are spelled oy or oi. They discovered these two spelling patterns make the same sound, however the /oi/ spelling comes at the beginning or middle of a word or syllable. The /oy/ spelling comes at the end of a word or syllable.
We traveled to the DuPage County forest preserve to see how a natural resource such as Sugar Maple trees are tapped for their sap and turned into maple syrup. This trip supported our social studies Economics theme. The students enjoyed the experience. Thank you to Carl Bade for chaperoning this trip!
Social Studies
We dove into our Economics theme this week by learning about needs, wants, technology, saving, and many other concepts related to economics, or the working world. The students are reading the social studies text and learning how to find definitions for key vocabulary words by looking around the bold or highlighted words in the text. We are having many fabulous conversations about this topic! I hope you are hearing about it at home!
Reading & Social Studies
Last week, the children finished their research project for Black History month. Their work is fantastic, and I hope you enjoyed reading their projects during parent-teacher conferences. We continue to read January's Sparrow, by Patricia Polacco. The children are using all the strategies we've discussed for reading fiction during this work. They are writing their thinking on a "thinking strip." With a thinking strip, the children have room to write evidence from the text to support their thinking. What's important is not only WHAT they are thinking, but WHY they are thinking this. We have amazing discussions about this fantastic book. The children are really becoming deep thinkers as they read!
This week, the children read a story called The Goat in the Rug by Charles L. Blood, Martin Link, and Nancy Winslow Parker. This story is a narrative nonfiction selection about a Navajo weaver who sheared her goat for its wool, or mohair, then dyed it, spun it, and wove it into a rug. This story reinforces our Economics social studies theme, because it shows how people take natural resources and use them to make products for sale. The children discovered that making a rug from goat’s wool is very time consuming, and this makes hand-made Navajo rugs scarce. We talked about how the Navaho weaver is a producer of goods, and the students made a flow chart to show the steps the weaver followed in producing the rug. The children are also working together to weave potholders from looms using cotton loops.
Writing Workshop
We continued working on opinion writing the past two weeks. The children have learned the most convincing letters state a clear opinion (Pinky and Rex is a fantastic book!), giving a specific reason (The character, Pinky and Rex, really care about one another.), then supporting it with examples from the text (For example, when Pinky was sad Rex tried many things to cheer him up.) I hope you enjoyed reading their published letters at parent-teacher conferences.
This week the students began writing nominations for book awards. For example, they chose a book they felt strongly about and wrote what a judge might need to know to give that book an award. We brainstormed awards they thought their books might deserve, such as Best Book About History for Kids Award, Laugh Out Loud Award, Most Colorful Pictures Award, etc, I am very impressed with their growth in opinion writing since we started this unit!
Math
Last week, the students finished up the first investigation in Unit 4. They organized and represented data, and they learned the conventions of picture graphs, bar graphs, and Venn diagrams. This week, we began the second investigation in Unit 4. Students worked with numerical data as they collected information about the number of pockets worn by their classmates and the number of teeth lost by second graders and other elementary-age students. They organized and represented numerical data, and they learned the conventions of line plots. The children are having a lot of fun with these concepts!
Word Work
Last week’s word sort was the last of our study of r-controlled vowels. The children discovered that /ur/ says the engine sound, or rrrrrrrrrrrrr, just like the /er/ and /ir/ spelling we’ve already discussed. This makes spelling very challenging, and requires the children to use their eyes and ears to spell words. They must use their eyes to memorize if a word makes the rrrrrrrrrrrr sound with /ur/, /ir/ or /er/. They must also listen for sounds in words so they can try different spelling patterns, then see what looks correct! The children compared the /ur/ pattern with /ur_e/, which also says rrrrrrrrrr, and /-ure/ which makes the long u sound. Some students also learned that /ear/ can also say rrrrrrrrr, and -ere, ear, and eer make the long e sound.
This week, the children compared words that are spelled oy or oi. They discovered these two spelling patterns make the same sound, however the /oi/ spelling comes at the beginning or middle of a word or syllable. The /oy/ spelling comes at the end of a word or syllable.