October 5 - 7

We got to see children's book author and illustrator Mo Willems talk about how he makes books and read his newest book online this past Tuesday! We have read several of his books in class and students love looking for the pigeon in each one. Special thanks to the teachers at our school who arranged for us to be one of only 200 elementary school sites in the country to get to participate in this exciting event.

During this short week we continued to practice our reading strategy of re-reading a sentence when we don't know a word. We also did a variety of activities with the words on our word rings.

In writing we published our first mini-books which will be in the class library for a few weeks before they come home. Students have really enjoyed reading each other's books and have been learning the importance of making their writing neat enough for someone else to read!

In math we continued to come up with creative ways to make a number using addition, subtraction and pictures. We also practiced counting by 5s to 100 and putting numbers in order through many of the online math games linked on this page.

We went to the Strategies Lab again and learned a new game: Shape By Shape. We will continue to play Sudoku Jr (4x4) after intersession as many students were still unsure of how to play (they were only using the colors to determine where the missing numbers could go instead of checking each column and row). Through these games students have been building stamina for problem solving and learning how to articulate their thought processes.

Thanks to everyone who has been coming in to school for their conferences this Thursday and Friday. Please remember there is no school on Monday (October 12) and then intersession runs October 13 - 23. Students do not need to bring a backpack to school during intersession. I sent home students' reading books and word rings for them to work on at home and then return to school on October 26.

Finally, we welcomed a new student to our class on Wednesday! He did a great job learning our schedule and everyone was a kind friend and good helper to him. We look forward to learning more about him after intersession.