Friday, March 20, 2015

March 20

Hi Fish Families!

Happy first day of spring! Here is a glimpse of what we have been up to this week:

Read Across America: SMS is celebrating Read Across America next week! Monday will be crazy sock day. Tuesday is wear your favorite hat day. Wacky Wednesday is when we wear mismatched clothing to school. Thursday is dress as your favorite book character and Friday is bring a pillow/stuffed animal for drop everything and read.

Readers' Workshop:  Your readers have been learning about the features of non-fiction and how readers read to learn new information about a topic. Some of the features we focused on this week were, Table of Contents, Glossary, bold words, and the use of headings. We talked about how non-fiction books aren't always read cover to cover. Readers can read a section of these books. 

Writers' Workshop: We are continuing our work on "How To" writing. This week we reviewed planning our story across our fingers. We also worked on using our writing partners to help our writing get better. By having a partner act out our books with us, we can better know if a place is confusing and fix it. This peer editing is an important component of writing. By talking about our writing we become better writers!

Math: The math thinkers in our class have been working on rote counting beyond 50 as a math warm-up this week. We have been busy measuring lengths and using the terms longer and shorter.  We also talked about how the term taller (instead of longer)is used when talking about people. The children explored with pan balances and used the measuring vocabulary heavier and lighter. We continue to work with 2D and 3D objects. Please continue to work on those math flashcards at home. We appreciate your support!

Visual Arts: We are creating beautiful spring flowers and leprechauns. 

Dramatic Play: The fish grocery store is quite a busy place and the children are enjoying our new dollhouse.

Up-coming Events:

  • Field trip to the Music Hall- 4/2
  • Early Release for Conferences-4/8 and 4/15
  • Phonics-review 
  • Handwriting-f and q
  • Word-my
Have a great weekend!
Kristen

Friday, March 6, 2015

March 6

Hello!

Just a quick reminder that the school district meeting is at SMS tonight beginning at 7:00. Free child care will be provided by the Stratham Teachers' Association (for those attending the meeting) at the PTO movie night beginning at 6:30 .

Here is a glimpse into our week:

Readers' Workshop: We have begun learning about reading for information. The children were introduced to the terms Fiction and Non-Fiction and are beginning to categorize the books we read. They were assigned new partnerships this week and are working in new reading spots.

Writers' Workshop: We have begun learning about "How To" books. The children have read and explored the traits of these non-fiction texts. Next week we will begin writing our own "How To" books.

Interactive Read Aloud: We have been doing these all year, but I changed up the format a bit this week. We have begun reading certain stories in a circle where we have discussions without raising our hands. We are using the norms we established for our science talks, but added onto them. The children are agreeing and disagreeing with each other using polite/respectful language and are citing reasons for their thinking. It has been amazing to watch! The story Rainbow Fish provided lots of discussions on sharing and kindness and Ira Sleeps Over led to some great discussions on teasing and worry.

Visual Art: The children have created some great spring art to decorate our bulletin boards! We have sparkling shamrocks and are in the process of making rainbows. They also water-colored rainbow fish.

Math: This week's math workshop has been full of addition stories/word problems. The children focused on the addition and equal symbols. We continue to work on developing an understanding on teen numbers being "ten plus _ more" through games and activities. We played Monster Squeeze on the iPads and learned a new game called "Growing Train" to practice addition.

Dramatic Play: The fish class grocery store opened today! The children are thinking about a name for the store and are enjoying playing there.

Up-coming Events:

  • No School 3/13
  • Word of the Week-we
  • Lively Letter-c *Our last phonics letter!
  • Handwriting- r, n & m

Happy "spring forward" weekend!
Kristen

Thursday, March 5, 2015

End 68 Hours of Hunger

Hi Fish Families!

I just wanted to let you know about some recent happenings at SMS.


  • End 68 Hours of Hunger is looking for donations. SMS is collecting jars of peanut butter for this worthy cause.



  • Our dramatic play area will be a grocery store this month. We are looking for any empty food containers you might have to become props in our grocery store.

Thanks for your support!
Kristen