The Fish Class: October 9, 2015

Hi Fish Families!

WE FILLED THE FISH JAR! The children voted to have a "chew bubble gum in school" day on Tuesday. I will provide the sugarless bubblegum. Please let me know, via email, if you DON'T want your child participating.

October is safety month. We are practicing safety drills and learning about our community helpers through various non-fiction books. Our first school-wide lock down drill was success. I was amazed at how quiet our class was.

Here is a glimpse into our week:

Readers' Workshop: Our current unit is entitled We Are Readers. The children have practiced reading the world (environmental print in our school) and books that help us learn about the world. This week we have practiced reading independently (privately) and with a partner. Please ask your child about how they sit when reading with a partner and where the book should be. Today, our lesson focused on reading a book from cover to cover, without skipping any pages. We used post-it notes to mark a "Wow" page and shared with the class what made it a special page in the book.

Writers' Workshop: This fish class loves to write! This week the children learned how to add onto a piece of writing. They can either tape on another page to make it a scroll, or they can turn one page into a booklet by stapling on additional pages. The children love to use our staplers to create booklets! We are focusing on labeling our pictures by stretching out words and writing the sounds we hear.

Math Workshop: The children made a class circle collage today. They are circle experts! We played a pocket problem math game this week where items were placed in a pocket and more were added or removed. The children then counted the items. (Common Core standard K.OA.1 Represent addition concretely or verbally. Represent subtraction concretely or verbally.) The concepts of of "one more" and "one less" were introduced during math this week. This is the successor function (K.CC.4). Introduction to sorting was our final math focus this week. We learned the fancy math word, attributes, and practiced sorting various ways.