Nov. 7th News

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Mrs. Healey’s Classroom News (11/7/15)

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What We’ve Been Up To:
A big thank you to all those who made it out to parent conferences this past week. The home-school connection is such a vital piece of a child’s education. I am committed to keeping you involved as we work together for the remainder of the school year. I look forward to meeting with the rest of you on our next early release day, Nov. 18th.

Celebrating our published authors!!

Writing: On Thursday we had a BLAST celebrating our Kevin Henkes-inspired stories! Students demonstrated their ability to write just like our mentor author while creating their own interesting, realistic problem and solution! Bravo, writers! Their amazing stories were sent home on Thursday along with all the compliments and praise they received from their peers. I hope you enjoy reading them!

     While we were in the final stages of publishing our stories, we also did some fabulous writing inspired by one of our Global Read Aloud stories. The OK Book reminds us that it's ok to be ok! We had great discussions around our own "oks" as well as our "better than oks". Enjoy the official book trailer and some sample poems below!

                        

    With the short week and working so hard  on our poems, we did not complete blog response questions this week. Next week will bring us to our final week of the Global Read Aloud.
*Math: As we make our way through Unit 3, we continue to practice our addition and subtraction facts. We have been working hard on the relationship between addition and subtraction and building fact families (when you know one math fact, you really know four!). We have learned some fun games, such as Addition Top-It, and the class favorite: Salute!

 Directions for this fun game will be sent home next week. In addition, to continue the math learning at home, these IXL skills mirror the lessons being taught in class:
      -E.13: Complete the addition sentence: 1 digit
      -F.1: Review - subtract one-digit numbers - up to 10
      -L.1: Add and subtract numbers up to 20
      -K.3: Fact Families
Science: 2H continues to do spectacular work as scientists. A few weeks ago we had a special guest, Martha Winokur, come in and help us establish "norms and expectations" for our science talks. By setting these expectations, we can have rich, authentic conversations about our science thinking. Ms. Winokur was incredibly impressed (as were the other 6 SMS teachers who came to watch the Owls in action!) with how kind, respectful, and knowledgeable our class was. Nice, nice work!

All Owls created a magnifying glass to "sign" our Science Talk contract.

    With our science talks underway, we've been hard at work with our earth science unit studying earth's materials. After collecting soil samples from around the school building (we explored soil from the playground, the preschool playground, the woods, and the field), students recorded detailed diagrams in their science notebooks. After analyzing the contents, we thought about questions we could explore during this unit. Our friend Tanner, had the great idea: which soil would grow a plant? Would they all grow? Would some be more successful than others? The entire class was excited to test this one out!! We planted sunflower seeds an anxiously awaited the results.

    Within days, we had sprouts growing in each different soil type! We'll keep monitoring their growth over the next several weeks. While our soil experiment continues, we also were curious about the types of rocks we could find surrounding our school. After collecting 10 rocks, these scientists had to decide on a way to sort their rocks and record their sort in their science notebooks. We'll continue our investigation this week!

*Typing: During their time in Maker Space with Mr. G this week, students had a great time exploring a new typing program: Typing Club! Students can access this site at home using the username pattern of 5 followed by their first name followed by 26 (ex: 5ashley26). The password is: qwerty. Mr. G is challenging students to use the correct hand/finger placement, but he is not insisting on it (their hands are still a little small to comfortably reach all keys!). The Typing Club link has been added to our "Helpful Links" list located in the top right corner of our blog.
*Book Orders: November Scholastic Book Orders were sent home last week and are due Monday, Nov. 9th. If you’re interested in buying any books as holiday gifts, you can order online and send me an email letting me know to keep the books until we can work out a time for you to pick them up—just let me know! You can also send a paper order and check in an envelope if you prefer ordering that way. I will send home one more book order before the holiday (Scholastic is pretty good about getting books delivered quickly!).  

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Coming Up:
- Scholastic Book Orders Due: Monday, Nov. 9th

- No School (Veteran's Day): Wednesday, Nov. 11th

- PTO Spaghetti Dinner and BINGO: Friday, Nov. 13th, 6:00pm
- Disguise a Turkey Homework Assignment Due: Friday, Nov. 13th

Have a great week!