November 30 - December 4

This week we got to go to the Strategies Lab and learn two new games: Safari Rush Hour (which is slightly harder than Rush Hour Jr as more parts move in more directions) and Hoppers Jr (in which you start with various frog arrangements and after hopping over them, you try to leave only 1 frog remaining on the board). Both games require thinking ahead a few steps and considering the consequences of your actions - universal skills! The students came up with the following new universal problem solving strategies that help them play these games and do other hard things: concentrate, stay calm, be in control, and relax.

We started learning about coins this week with our new math specialist. He taught us about what is pictured on each side of both the penny and the nickel, and we noticed many other interesting details on the coins. He also taught the students several new games: number line squeeze (using terms like "greater than" and "less than"), penny and nickel trading (learning that 5 pennies = 1 nickel and then practicing counting by 5s and 1s to see how much money you have at the end), and two digit top-it (making the largest two digit number with number cards and keeping track of your score with tally marks). We are also reviewing number pairs that add up to make ten through a variety of games.

In reading we reviewed getting our mouth ready to say the first letter(s) of an unkown word to help us make a good guess about what would make sense. Students are learning to notice consonant blends (sw, sp, sm...) and digraphs (th, ch, sh...) to help them figure out unknown words instead of just using the first letter alone. We are also starting to look for work chunks and little words we recognize inside big words (see photo where we found "an" in many words and names).

Students are learning the foundations of typing when we go to the computer lab twice a week. They also have opportunities to make Voicethread comments and play the games linked on this site when they go to the computer with a partner during reading and math centers.

Thank you so much to the families who contributed books from the book fair to our classroom! I really appreciate your generosity and the students loved reading the new stories. We have enjoyed Stick Man, I Don't Like To Read and next week we will read The Coin Counting Book.