Wednesday, December 16th

Whoo...what a busy day we had today. This morning our morning meeting was in english. We helped write our morning message and participated in our daily math routines. We started a new math routine on Monday.We are workin on creating math mountains with the total being 100. We get to pick one partner (which has to be a multiple of ten) and then we have to dtermine the other partner. We then write the number sentences that correcpind with the math mountain and make the partners using dimes.

After morning meeting, we had reading workshop. The red rhinos had two minilessons today. The first minilesson was on a new choice for the daily five. The students now have the choice of writing in their writing about reading notebooks. They are able to respond to the stories that they are reading indpendently by determining a word to describe the character and using text based details to support their thinking. Or they may choose to step into the story and record what it is the character may say. Our second minilesson was on noticing and remembering words within the books that we read. The green gators read the story Fluffy and Barron and worked on stepping into the story. We ended our morning with continuing to write our Flat Stanley letters.

In the afternoon we read some of the story Flat Stanley in Space. Then, the red rhinos worked on represnting numbers using quick ones, tens, and hundreds. The green gators worked on solving story problems that invloved money.

We ended our afternoon with a trip to england. We learned a lot about how Christmas is celebrated in England.Ask your child to share with you what they learned about Chrsitmas in England.

Friday, December 11th

Today was a great day! We started our morning with our word study assessments and a morning meeting in Spanish. We then glued our word study words in our word study notebooks. We were all excited when Mrs. Zodarecky came into our classroom to read us a story called Herschel and the Hannukah Goblins. She taught us about the charcateristcs of a fiction story which include the characters, problem, and solution.

In the afternoon we listened to a little more of our Flat Stanley book. Then we explored what happened when we dropped our parachutes. We learned that air affects the way that our parachutes fall. We learned that air resistence causes our parachutes to fall slowly. The students will be brining their prachutes home today. Please ask your child to explain air resitance to you. We had a great surprise when Tolulope's dad arrived and became our first mystery reader of the year. He read us the story Froggy Eats Out. To end the day we determined which table won the organization trophy for the week. Congratulations to the yellow table. Also congratulations to Ian and Danielito who won the estimation prize for the week!

Thursday, December 10th 2009

Today was another busy day! In the morning, our question of the day was: What color is your hair? We learned that more of our friends have brown hair than have blonde or black hair. We showed this using a number sentence, and compared the numbers writing which number was "more than" or "less than" another number.
We are continuing our math routines in the morning, adding a different number to our total. Our number today was 188, and we showed this on our 240 chart by writing the equation 188 = 180 + 8.

During Reading workshop, some of our friends read the book Julius, El Rey de La Casa, and we talked about what the character was like at the beginning of the story, and what happened to cause the character to change at the end. The Red Rhinos learned about the Literacy Cafe menu, and how we can use this to help us when we read to ourselves, by choosing a strategy to help us when we read.

We read more from our book Flat Stanley, and are continuing to enjoy the adventures that Flat Stanley has.

During math, the Green Gators took a quick quiz on addition facts, and practiced using the strategies of counting on, drawing dots, and counting from the higher number. We are continuing to practice our addition facts through ten and higher, to help us with solving word problems. The Red Rhinos practiced making quick drawings using tens, hundreds, and ones.

Monday, December 7th 2009

Today was a very productive day! We started our day with something new to help our friends learn their sight words. Instead of calling our friends by their real names, we have given each of the students a new "name" that is one of the sight words our first grade friends are learning. So, our friends call each other "Miss said", Mr. What, etc. We will continue to practice these words until Christmas break, so ask your child what their "new" name is!

In the morning, we began with our morning meeting in Spanish. Our question of the day was: Do you have a dog? We learned that 18 of our friends did have dogs, and 19 of our friends do not. We practiced writing the words "mas" and "menos" underneath each of the words, to show which number was more, and which number was less.

Then we read our poems of the week. In English, the poem was How to Talk to your Snowman. The friends who read this poem learned about words like arctic, antarctic, freeezing, and igloo. Our friends who had their poem in Spanish read the poem Una Carta Importante, which was a letter to Santa Clause. Each group then drew a picture and wrote about the mental images that the words in the poem created for us.

During our practice of the Daily Five, each of our word study groups learned how to sort our word study words, and practiced putting them in those groups, saying the names of the words as we do it. Ask your child what their word study words are, and how they sorted them. We also continued to learn about the different parts of a friendly letter, as we wrote a class letter to different teachers in our district to help us practice for our Flat Stanley letters that we will be sending out very soon!


After lunch, we read our Read Aloud book about Flat Stanley, as we learn more about friendly letters as well. In Social STudies, our friends reviewed the different places in our community, and practiced saying "Yo veo...and describing the things we see on our way to school.

During math, the Green Gators learned how to make math mountains, and using them to help us find an unknown partner. We did a great job counting on from the bigger number, and drawing dots as we count to help us keep track. The Red RHinos practiced counting and adding numbers to 100.

We had a great day of learning today!

Wednesday, December 2nd

Today was a very productive day! We took our word study assessment and glued our word study words. In writing workshop we learned the parts of a friendly letter (heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature) and practiced writing one as a class to our previous student teacher, Mr. F. We then had a chance to start writing a friendly letter to the person of our choice.

In reading workshop, the Green Gators read the story "Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon" and then brainstormed different character traits of the main character. We then wrote about one of these traits and gave examples from the story of when the character displayed this trait. The Red Rhinos shared their writing for stepping into stories for the "Little Red Head."

In math, the Green Gators played the games "double compare" and "10s go fish" to practice the counting on skill and comparing numbers. The Red Rhinos reviewed the various kinds of word problems that we've learned and practiced the procedures for solving these problems. We then took the rest of our assessment.

In science both the Red Rhinos and the Green Gators experimented with the way that air takes up space by placing a vial of air upside down in a tub of water, and observed how the pocket of air stays in the vial when it's submerged.

Monday, November 23rd

Today we celebrated Diamond's adoption with cupcakes and juice. We also had the chance to see her adoption ceremony on video and talk about the special parts of the day.

In math, the Red Rhinos worked on story problems that were in Spanish and in English. The story problems had information missing and extra information as well. We had to fill in the missing information and identify the information that was extra and then solve the problems. The Green Gators worked on subtraction problems and writing the equations for those problems.

In reading we read a funny poem about Thanksgiving and than wrote about our reactions and connections that we made with the poem. We also received our new words for word study that we'll be working with for the next 2 weeks and sorted those words. After that we did our Daily Five.

During writing, the Green Gators talked about how to add description to their writing and worked for a little while on the writing they want to publish. The Red Rhinos chose the work that they would like to have published and worked on those stories.

Friday, November 20th

In math, Red Rhino's number of the day was 42 and the Green Gator's was 27. We practiced making these totals with coins and equations. Green Gators worked on representing subtraction with circle drawings and equations using the minus sign. The Red Rhinos worked on subtraction using numbers in the teens. They practiced this skills by creating equations using number cards and solving them with partners.

Today we also talked about adoption in honor of Diamond's adoption day. Mrs. Gearhart came in and read us a story about adoption and we created cards for Diamond.

We took our word study assessment and glued our words into our word study notebook. We also performed our reader's theatre for the first time today!

Thursday, November 19th 2009

Today was a very busy and productive day. In the morning, our question of the day was: Cual es tu comida favorita para el Dia de Accion de Gracias? (What is your favorite food to eat for Thanksgiving? We learned that most of our friends like turkey the best, and we showed this using several mathematical equations. We showed this with 23 > 4, and 6 > 2, and used the words mas and menos to compare the two numbers.

After that, we practiced making words. Our english word for the day was volcanoes, and we made several words using the letters in the word volcanoes. In Spanish, our word was camisas, and we practiced making words like casa, masa, misa, etc. using those letters as well.

During Writing Workshop, the Green Gators got their very own personal word walls that they can use during Writing Workshop. We practiced looking for sight words on the word wall and using the correct spelling in our own stories! THe Red Rhinos practiced identifying describing words and we brainstormed our own for different things like a chair, the sky, and a day. We then read through our own writing and tried to find places where we could add a describing word.

In Math today, the Red Rhinos continued to practice solving word problems, using comparisons such as more than and less than, and showing them using proof drawings and equations to show our work. The Red Rhinos' number of the day was 41, and we practiced showing this number using coins and different addition and subtraction equations. The Green Gators number of the day was 26, and we showed this number using coins and addition and subtraction equations as well. We also practiced making number sentences and using the strategy of counting on by combining the total number of pancakes (paperplates) of two different classroom "chefs." We then practiced following physical directions and doing body and space activities, while also using the counting on strategy.

During Social Studies, we continued our discussion of communities. We sang the "All Around the Town" song and pointed out the different businesses and buildings that are part of a community. We then read a book called "Our Community" which described all different kinds of jobs and businesses that we can find in our community. In this book we used matching cards to group the different community members with their jobs.

Wednesday, November 18th

In math the red rhinos created a venn diagram, comparing flowers, pets, and a choice of our own. We also solved story problems. In math the green gators, practiced counting on from the bigger number and we played the quilt game.

In reading workshop, we picked "just right books" for our reading bags. Red Rhinos finished reading "Sheila Ray the Brave," and talked about how characters changed. The Green Gators chose to write about a characteristic of Weberly from the book we read yesterday. In handwriting we practiced the letter "u" and practiced using the handwriting paper. The Red Rhinos also practiced using the handwriting paper. We then read a read-aloud book called "The New Girl and Me" and made connections to our own experiences and other higher level thinking questions.

Thursday, November 5th

What a GREAT learning day we had today. We started our morning with a Spanish morning meeting. After monring meeting we discussed our making words activity. We tried to make words from the letters in director (spanish) and covers (english). Ask your child what words they were able to make from these letters. After morning meeting, we started writng workshop. Today we learned the steps that a writer takes to write a minilesson. We learned that writers get an idea for what they would write from the lifebook, then get a picture of what we want to write in our mind. Next, we point to the pages and say what we will write, then we sketch our pictures, and finally we write our words. In reading workshop we once again worked to identify character traits.In math, the red rhinos came up with number sentences for the number 34 and practiced using a ruler. The green gators learned what an equation is and learned how to correctly use the equals and not equals sign. We ended our day with social studies and read aloud. Some students worked with Senorita Wesley to learn places in our community and to identify where we live, work, and play in the community. The students who worked with Mrs. Helfer reada non-ficition book that supports these ideas.

Wednesday, November 4th

Today we learned what is air. Air is made up of invisible gases. In Math, we learned about rectangles, squares, and triangles. Rectangles have two longer sides and two shorter sides. A square has four equal sides and four corners. A triangle has three sides and three corners. Green Gators learned how to represent addition quickly threw drawings. We also worked on number of the day, 18 (even) and 33 (odd). In Writing workshop we practiced adding more detail to our pictures and stories. We also learned that writing never ends. When you're done, you've only just begun. We did our daily five and worked on thinking about our characters when we read. Describing them in detail, who they are, they're characteristics. We also talked about how we feel when we go to bed. The amount of people that our happy at bed time is greater than the number of people that are sad.

Tuesday, October 27th

What a great learning day we had today. We started our morning with our morning meeting in Spanish. We helped write morning message, talked about the calender, and did our math routines. Our question of the day was how many letters do you have in your name. We leanred that a greater number of friends have seven letters in their name. After our morning meeting we shared our making words notebooks. Today we made smaller words from the words DREAMS and COCINAS. Ask your child to share with you what words they were able to make from these letters. After we shared our making words, we had our reading workshop mini lesson. Our mini lesson was on how effective readers think whlie they read. We shared our thinking for the story The Art Lesson.

After some outdoor recess, we completed our number of the day books. Today the Red Rhinos worked on making the number 28 and the green gators worked on making the number 13. We ended our day with math. In math, the red rhinos reviewed what an equation is and used this knowledge to help us determine if some math statements were equations. We also learned the math symbols for equal, not equal, greater than, and less than. We learned to use these signs to write mathematical statements. The green gators figured out number sentences for for parteners of 6, 7, and 8.

Monday, October 19th

Today we started our day with a Spanish morning meeting. We completed our morning message, talked about the calender, and completed our daily math routines. Our question of the day was...how do you get to your favorite restaurant. Thank you to Elias who read the question (in Spanish) out loud to us. We learned that the greatest number of friends get to their favorite restaurant by car. After morning meeting, we read our poems of the week. Some friends read the poem wind and other friends read the poem manana de octobre. They were then asked to put the poem into their poetry notebooks and respond to it by recording what mental image the poem gave them. Ask your child to share with you which poem they read and to tell you a little bit about it! After poetry, we started the daily five. Today we learned how to use a Reading List to keep track of the books that we read. Our goal is for each friend in our class to read at least 100 books this year!!! After our mini lesson, we spent time working on our daily five choices and meeting in small groups to learn our word study patterns for the week.

In the afternoon, we took advantage of the nice weather and enjoyed some outdoor recess. After recess, we completed our Number of The Day books. The red rhinos worked on coming up with partners for 21 and the green gators worked on finding partners for 7. We ended our day with math. Today the red rhinos learned a strategy to help them add numbers more efficiently. They worked on breaking one addend apart to make a ten and then adding the left overs. For example, if we wanted to add 8 + 6, we would take 2 from the six and add it to the eight (making ten). Which would give us four left over.Our new "easier" number sentence would be 10 + 4= 14. Try working on some of these problems with your child at home! The green gators, reviewed patterns and once again worked on break apart numbers for nine.

Thursday, October 15th

A busy, busy day today in C-7 & C-8. We delivered churros (a Spanish desert) to all of the students at EV in honor of Hispanic Heritage month. Thank you to some great parents for spending your day frying this special treat.

We started our morning with an English morning message. Our number today was 60. We made another group of 10 and wrote equations that equal 50. Our question of the day was, Have you ever climbed a Tree? We learned that 26 students have climbed a tree and 12 have not. We determined that the number of students that have climbed a tree is greater than the number of students that have not climbed a tree.

After morning meeting, we shared the words that we were able to make from the letters in the words PELICULA and FEATHERS. Ask your child to share with you the words that they were able to make. After making words, we had writing workshop. In writing workshop we learned of another author Robert McCluskey (author of make ways for ducklings) that lives the writerly life and used the things that he saw around him to come up with the stories he writes. Ask your child to tell you the story of how Robert McCluskey had some live ducks actually move into his tiny apartment! After we heard Robert McCluskey's story, we spent some time writing in our lifebooks. To end the morning we spent some time engaged in our daily 5 routines. Today we were introduced to listening to reading and used our first daily fiver checklist to guide our daily 5 work.

After lunch we enjoyed a shot story about Churros and ate our tasty treat. Then we completed our number of the day books. Today's number was 20. Ask your child to share with you the ways that he or she was able to make the number 20. In math, the red rhinos had a yard sale. We worked on using our coin strips to learn how to make change. The green gators, worked on sequencing numbers.

Thursday, October 8th

Another busy day for the red rhinos and green gators. We started our morniong with our walking field trip to Barnard Fire Department. It was a 1.4 mile walk, but we all made it! At the firehouse we got to see fireman Dean get dressed up in his fire gear. After that we went into the garage of the firehouse and learned all about the different fire trucks and equipment. We saw the ladder truck, the pumper truck, the rescue truck, and squad truck. After our field trip we spent the afternoon doing word study (look, say, cover, write, check) and practicing our daily five rouitnes.

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Today was a productive day in C-7 and C-8. Our question of the day was: What animal do you like the least? A monkey, Pig, or Lion? We learned that most of our friends like pigs the least, then lions, then monkeys. We showed this using the number sentence 25 < 2. Because only two of our friends liked monkeys the least, we said that 2 is less than 25 (the number of friends who liked pigs the least).
We continued to practice read to self and read to someone, and are working on building our stamina for reading for even longer periods of time--we made it to 21 minutes today!!

In the afternoon, we watched Senorita Wesley and Mrs. Helfer act out a skit, and we talked about what Mrs. Helfer did that good scientists DON'T do, and what good scientists SHOULD do, and then we made a list of the science rules for our classroom.
At the end of the day, we did our estimation jar, and counted exactly 111 pennies--Jordon was the lucky winner for the second week in a row. The red table won the Most Organized Team award for the second week in a row as well. Our number of the day was 17, and we showed this using a wide variety of number sentences and coin combinationss.

Have a great weekend!

Thursday, October 1st 2009

Today was a GREAT day! We started off our morning with the question of the day and our morning meeting in Spanish. Our question was: De que forma prefieres viajar?, which means, "How do you like to travel?", and our choices were: en avion, (airplane), caminando (walking), autobus (bus), carro (car), or bicicleta (bicycle). We learned that most of our friends prefer to travel by bus (23 friends), 8 friends like to travel by plane, 4 friends prefer the car, and 1 friend chose bicycle. We compared these numbers using the following number sentences: 23 > 8, 8 > 4, 4 > 0, and 0 < 4.

During our Reading Workshop time, our friends did a GREAT job practicing read to self. We are continuing to work on building our stamina, and are up to 18 minutes of sustained reading independently. We continue to work hard on being more independent and making good learning choices about where is a good spot to read quietly, and what good reading looks like and sounds like in our classroom. We also revisited what Read to Someone looks like. Ask your child what it means to sit "EEKK!" with a partner when reading aloud! Also, we talked about what it should sound like, and what the teacher and students should be doing during Reading Workshop time.

After Reading workshop, the Green Gators practiced handwriting, including the capital letters U, V< W, X, Y, and Z. The Red Rhinos practiced writing the center starting capitals using the second grade writing paper. After handwriting, we did math. The Green Gators practiced showing number flashes and counting numbers with tens and ones on our hands. The Red Rhinos practiced making math mountains, and making partners for numbers. Ask your child what a math mountain is!

Tuesday, Septmber 28th

Today was another busy and exciting day in C-7 and C-8. Our morning message was n Spanish, and our question of the day was: Como te sientes cuando ves a un perro? (How do you feel when you see a dog?) We learned that ALL of our friends are HAPPY when they see a dog, so we showed this using the number sentences 39 > 0, and 0 <39.

During the later part of our morning, we learned how we can pick good books that are JUST RIGHT for us. We learned the phrase I PICK, which stands for: P(urpose), I(nterest), C(omprehension), and K(now). This acronym will help us remember that when we pick books for our bag of books, we have different purposes for reading, as well as different interests, which we will think about when selecting books from the library. We also built our stamina and read independently for 16 minutes!

After lunch we completed our number of the day books. Today's number was 15. Ask your child to share with you the ways he or she was able to make the number 15 with number sentences and coins. After our number of the day work, we split into groups for math. The red rhinos worked on finding the partners for 10 (these are the numbers that can be ut together to equal ten). We charted these partners and found a pattern! We learned that you can switch the partners around and it will still equal ten (9+1=10 and 1+9=10). We also noticed that if one partner gets bigger the other gets smaller. Ask your child to name the partners for 10. The green gators worked on finding partners for the number 7. After math, we worked on handwriting. The red rhinos and green gators continue to review the formation of capital letters and are still working on using the first and second grade handwriting paper correctly.

Monday, September 28th 2009

Today was a busy (and rainy) day! In the morning, during our morning meeting our question of the day was: What is your favorite colored gumball? We learned that most friends thought pink was the best color, and the least number of friends liked the color yellow. We continued our math routines, and practiced counting on our fingers to 30, counted pennies to thirty, and used our number path to show how many tens and ones are in the number thirty. After morning meeting, we did a read aloud about Guinea Pigs, and we learned some new information about our furry new friends. We learned that it is important to keep their cages clean, and that some guinea pigs have long hair (but our pet Sammy does not).

Later this morning we practiced handwriting, and reviewed which capital letters start in the attic. Senorita Wesley's friends finished writing mystery letters, where they had to practice different frog jump capital letters. Mrs. Helfer's friends practiced starting corner capitals and reviewed frog jump capitals. We also practiced using the 2nd grade handwriting paper correctly as well. We are going to continue to work on this all year, because practice makes perfect :)

We also did our poem of the week. For Mrs. Helfer's friends, the poem was "I Love Fall", and for Senorita Wesley's friends, the poem was "El Abuelo". Both groups practiced reading the poem fluently, and thinking about what mental images came to our minds when we read the poem. After lunch, we did our Number of the Day, which was the number 14. We talked about different ways we could make the number 14 using different coin combinations, such as a dime and 4 pennies, 14 pennies, and two nickels and 4 pennies. We also practiced writing different number sentences (using both addition and subtraction) to make the number 14, as well as explaining HOW we solved the equation.

During math today, our green gators read a poem about sheep and practiced showing different number combinations to make the number 5. We practiced this using break-apart sticks and numbers, and showed different partners of 5. Mrs. Helfer's friends used secret code cards and money to work with the "teen" numbers. They practiced showing these numbers as a ten and ______ ones. It was a great day of learning!

Friday, September 25th

Today we started our day with morning meeting in Spanish. The question of the day was How many people did you bring with you to Open House... We learned that the greatest number of students brought one person with them to Open House last night. After our morning meeting, we worked on completing our Clock Buddies. We now have a buddy for every hour on the clock. This will help us find a partner (that we have each chosen) quickly in the upcoming days. We ended our monring with a visit form Mrs. DeCaire. Mrs. DeCaire comes from the Department of Motor Vehicles and teach us about safety. Today she taught us about bus safety. Ask your child to share with you what they learned about how to stay safe on the school bus.

In the afternoon, we had a chilly recess:> and then came in to complete our number of the day book. Today's number was 13. We made 13 cents from 13 pennies and from a dime and three pennies. After Number of the Day, we awarded the trophy to the most organized team. Congratulations to the Red table for earning the greatest number of table points this week. We also count the objects in the estimation jar. There was 135 pieces of candy in the jar this week. Congratulations to Noel and Jordon who won the candy this week.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Today was another busy day as we prepared some special activities to share with our families for Open House tonight. In the morning, our question of the day was What is your Favorite Vegetable? We learned that more friends liked corn than peas or carrots, and we showed this with a number sentence: 3 < 5, and the number of people that like corn was GREATER THAN the number of people who liked peas. We are continuing to practice using terms like greater than, less than, more, and fewer when comparing sets of numbers. We continue to practice our morning math routines, counting by 2's, identifying odd and even numbers, practicing the date, identifying numbers and how many tens and ones are in a number. Today's number was 26.

During Reading workshop, we practiced the Daily 5, and learned about our library. We learned about how we use the library, and what rules we need to have to make sure we keep the library neat and organized so friends can find a book to read quickly. We practiced Read to Self, and were able to read for 12 whole minutes without any distractions! We are contintuing to work on our independence when reading, so that we can make great learning choices.

After lunch we had recees outside. We we came inside, we completed our Number of the Day Book. Today's number was 12. Ask your child to tell you the number sentnces that they made that equal 12. During math, the Red Rhinos worked on creating different quantities with coins. We also read the Jelly Bean Book. Please review with your child the names of the coins and the quantities that they represent. In math, the Green Gators on Breaking apart the number 5 and identifying the difference between hexagons and pentagons.

Wednesday, September 23rd

What a busy Wednesday. We started our day with morning meeting in Spanish. We sang our morning greeting song, helped write morning message, and discussed the calender. This morning our question of the day was Cuantos Boisillios tienes in la ropa hoy? We learned that a greater number of people were wearing no buttons today. The fewest number of people were wearing two pockets. After our morning meeting we once again reviewed what we do duirng read to self. Mrs. Helfer and Mrs. Wesley are very impressed with the INDEPENDENCE we are learning during this time. Today we really focused on making good choices about where we choose to sit during read to self. We are building our stamina...we successfully read for 11 minutes today! After reading workshop, we did some handwriting practice. Both classes practiced writing Frog Jump Capitals on our handwriting paper. Our classes, ended our morning again talking about how writers live the "writerly life." We read a book called I'm In Charge of )Celebrations. We are trying to really notice things around us (like good writers do). Ask your child to share with you something they noticed today!

After lunch we celebrated a birthday. Happy birthday Sarah Walter...were sorry you didn't get to share your treat on Friday! After our birthday celebration, we went to the Multipurpose Room to play Duck, duck, Goose. After our recess, we completed our number of the day book. Today's number was 11. Ask your child to share with you some of the number sentences they were able to create that equal 11.

Tuesday, September 22nd

Sorry that we have not been updating the blog daily...we were having some computer difficulties! We have hopefully overcome these technological difficulties and will be updating daily!

This morning we started our day with morning meeting in English. Mrs. Helfer shared some pictures of her summer vacation. All of the students will be sharing the posters about their summer vacation over the next few days. Our question of the day was Have you ever ridden a horse. We learned that a greater number of students have riden a horse and a fewer number of students have not ridden a horse. We counted by 2s and learned that 26 friends have ridden a horse and 11 have not. We also decided that an even number of people have ridden a horse and an odd number of friends have not. Ask your child to tell you how to determine if a number is odd or even. After our morning meeting we went over our morning work...making words. The big words were play ground and garajes. Talk with your child and ask them to share with you the words that they were able to make from these big words. During reading workshop we practiced read to self. We are work on becoming independent at reading independently and building our stamina. We were impressed that the students were able to go from 3 minutes yesterday to 10 minutes today. Today we also got new handwriting books and practiced Frog Jump Capitals. All of theseletter start the same way. Ask your child what letters are Frog Jump Capitals. We ended our morning with a fantastic story about an author named Bird Baylor. She is an author who lives her life noticing everything around her. She keeps tract of what she sees in a special notebook called a "lifebook." Many of the students are excited about someday keeping their own “lifebook” (which is what is going to happen soon!)

After a short (rained out) recess, we came back to our classroom and worked on our number of the day book. Today's number was 10. Ask your child to tell you how they made 10 cents and the number sentences that they were able to come up with that equal 10. After our Number of the Day, we created a chart of our thinking about Guinea Pigs. We recorded what we think we know about guinea pigs and things were are wondering about this little creature. Tomorrow we will begin an investigation of guinea pigs to see what we can learn about our class pet Sammy. We ended the day with math. In math, the green gators practiced how to divide 4 pancakes onto 2 plates. The red rhinos started math with number flashes and ended it with story problems. Ask your child to show you how to flash the number 18.

September 16, 2007!

Hello everyone! Happy Wednesday :-)

Today, again we sang and practiced with our Kindergarten friends!

We learned a new math routine- Number of the Day book. Todays number was 7. We came up with number sentences that equal 7, and also used money to get to 7cents. (Nickel and 2 pennies, 5+2=7) We will be doing this everyday after recess!

We did guided discovery of markers. Together as a class we learned how good citizens use markers in the classroom- close the markers and listen for the snap, do not leave markers on the table, etc.

We practiced two different ways to read a book- Reading the pictures or reading the words! We had a volunteer show us the right and wrong way to do this :-)

Mrs. Gearhart showed us a powerpoint about how to be a good EV student!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Good afternoon! We learned a lot of new things today!

Morning meeting, we had the number 12! We wrote in the words that were missing in our morning message. Our question of the day was "How old are you?" The age of 7 had the most people, and the people who were 8 years old had the fewest! We only have one person who is 5 years old!

Mrs. Maynard's class came down and practiced the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" song with us again in spanish!

In math today, the Red Rhinos learned about what our math community is going to look like, since we are starting a new math program this year! We started word problems today! The Green Gators learned about the numbers 0, 1, and 2. We colored in different plates with different colors for how many apples were on each plate!

We focused even more today on being a good citizen in our classroom! We read the book The Berenstain Bears and the Double Dare. We learned to not let others make decisions for us and to think for ourselves. We need to make good choices!

As a class we practiced how good citizens use pencils correctly in our class. (not put them in our mouth, don't break the erasers, etc.)

Have a great evening!

June 3, 2009

Good afternoon! We started off our day with doing morning message in spanish, and we introduced some new things that we will be incorporating into math next year! We decided to do this during morning meeting so students become familiar with the activities, and when fall comes, they will remember how to do them!

After morning meeting we went into writing workshop. Students are fixing up last minute details to their Autobiographies, so we can have our publishing party on Friday!

We had a long writing time today, so daily 5 was a bit shorter. We read the rest of the book "Mia's story", and discussed how the setting changed at the end. We noticed that the dump turned beautiful from the flowers that Mia planted. Students went back to their seats and drew the setting of the end of the story. On Friday, we will re-read the book as a whole group, discuss again how the setting changed from the beginning to the end, and then the students will go back and independently write a response to the book about setting! We then went into the rest of daily 5 for about 20 minutes, until lunch time!

We went outside for recess and enjoyed the warm weather :-) We came inside and finished the book the book "Frog and Toad are Friends." We went into social studies, and switched groups. We learned about symbols and found different areas on the map and we realized that they are all symbols! From there we had a bit of extra time and read about respect.

In math, the kindergarteners did a quick assessment of what they learned during the "How Many In All" unit. We did very well!!!

DONT FORGET~ 1st graders are going on their field trip to MCC tomorrow to see a play! Make sure all students wear their purple English Village shirts tomorrow!

JUNE1, 2009

Welcome back everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend, and hopefully got to see the air show!

We started off our Monday morning by cuting out our letters for "Making Words", 1st graders wrote in their dialogue journals, and everyone else got out their bag of books! Many students came in telling us how they saw the jets fly over their houses! It sure was loud!

Morning message was in spanish, and we did our poem on the week which was "Kite" for the kindergarteners, and _____________ for the first graders. We circled words that we know, and underlined words that rhymed! We went back to our seats and read through the poem independently by ourselves 2 times, circled words that we know, and drew a picture using atleast 4 colors! From here, we went right into the Daily 5. We needed a couple reminders to be more focused and lower our voices, but we got alot accomplished! We worked in small groups to work on "Making Words", and figured out what the big word was! Have fun working on these at home and coming up with other words!

Mrs. Keefer came in around 10:45 and we did a new book called "Mia's Story." We are now focusing on Setting in the book. We found out that Mia lives in a dump and uses scraps to make her house, and she is very poor. We read up to the part where she starts going up the mountain to find her run-away dog. We went back to our seats and drew a picture of the setting from the beginning of the story. On wednesday we will continue with this!

Considering it looked like it was going to rain outside, we took the students to the multipurpose room to do a couple relay races.

We came back and Seniorita Wesley did a spanish read aloud with our friends. We had a long time for math today- 1 hour! Kindergarteners learned two new games today- Totals of 6, and Racing Bears. Have your student explain how to play these games and they would be great games to play at home for addition practice!

Makre SURE YOU LOOK IN THE MONDAY FOLDERS!! There is a reminder sheet for our fieldtrip to the zoo next week! There will also be another slip coming home this week as a reminder for what parents signed up for volunteering to go to the zoo, which parents will be riding the bus with us, and which parents will be meeting us there. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR HELP!

May 28, 2009

Happy lovely rainy day! It was a bit hard to wake up to the rain, I must admit!

But we got a lot accomplished today!

We started off the day with our dialogue journals, morning meeting, and a 2nd grade assembly! The 2nd graders sang us some songs from Disney Movies! It was very entertaining.

We came back and did daily 5 for a good amount of time, considering it was short yesterday. After daily five, we read the book "Smelly Socks!" We couldnt imagine not washing our socks for over 3 weeks!!!

Lunch was in the multipurpose room today because of the assembly.

Because it was rainy outside and the multipurpose room was in use, we did a lot in the afternoon! We observed our wheat plants which are HUGE! Then we went into our Social Studies groups and on the green apples side we learned about respect and did a KWL chart to hang up in our room :-)

Math was a bit shorter today, but we started a new lesson on Blue and Red crayons and the many combinations we came up with to get to 5 crayons!

May 27, 2009

Good Afternoon! Today went by so fast and it was busy!

MRS. HELFER CAME TO VISIT US! Matthew is so tiny! We found out that he is now 6lbs and 12 oz! He is 2 weeks and a day old! We love seeing Mrs. Helfer and baby Matthew! Thank you for coming and visiting us!

Dialogue journals were done in the morning, and we did our new word study on our own today and created new words and wrote them in our word study journals :-)

Morning message was in spanish this morning. Unfortunately, Miss Wesley will not be with us for Thursday or Friday because she will be out of town!

Some friends had a rough morning and we had quite a bit of friends sent to the reflection chair and hopefully with our sub tomorrow, it won't happen again!

In the afternoon, we went outside for recess, and we came inside and enjoyed a fun read aloud! From there we went into math and had choice time :-)

Hope everyone can join us for the Dual Language Picnic on June 11th! There will be a flier going home next week with details.

1st Graders- you have a field trip on June 4th to go see a play!

Kindergarteners- You have a field trip to the zoo on June 10th- PLEASE MAKE SURE TO GET IN ALL PERMISSION SLIPS!!!

THANK YOU!

May 26, 2009

Good Afternoon everyone! I hope everyone had a great long weekend and hopefully everyone enjoyed the weather that we had!

We had some news things that we did this morning that you will notice in your childs Monday Folder. The students really liked doing this word study activity. If you have any questions about it, feel free to contact us! Encourage your child to make as many words as they can!

In writing we are almost done with our autobiograpies!

Daily 5 was a bit shorter today, and the kindergarteners did another reading response on My Daddy Snores, and we got to draw pictures along with it! Some of us connected the book to our own lives.

We went outside for recess for a bit today and enjoyed the fresh air.

Miss Wesley did a read aloud to the class that is in both English and Spanish! We did a lot of predicting of what might happen next in the book, and we thought it was very funny!

In math, the Red Rhinos had choice time, and the Green Gators did a addition and subtraction story problem.

Dont Forget~ Dual Language Picnic is JUNE 11TH 4PM-6PM!

May 21, 2009

OOPS! The Dual Language picnic is JUNE 11 :-)

May 20, 2009

Good Afternoon!

Unfortunately, Seniorita wesley was out AGAIN today for jury duty, and hopefully she will be back tomorrow, but we are not positive. LUCKILY, we have had a sub in the room for the past 2 days that speaks spanish! WE ARE LUCKY!

We did no peek write for word study today, and we are going to do look say cover write check tomorrow before our test, and we will glue in our sorts during daily 5.

The morning was a little loud as it is different not having miss wesley here, but the students are doing very well!

For writing today we learned how to put captions into our autobiographies. We added them so other friends who are looking at our books know what our pictures are :-)

Daily 5 was short today, as we were lucky to have Mrs. Keefer read to us again today. As a class we came up with some traits of Arthur before and after he babysat the twins. Those were some crazy twins! We realized he was a lot more confident after he babysat them the first time.

Recess was so nice! We love the warm weather.

We came back inside and did weekly reader in spanish about the colors of different fish, and we did an activity with it.

Math was short today! But the green gators got to do some subtraction word problems, and the red rhinos were playing a guessing game with the 100's chart.

INFORMATION FOR ALL PARENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!------------ We are having a bilingual picnic on JULY 11TH, THURSDAY from 4-6 pm. MORE INFORMATION TO FOLLOW but keep the date open!!!!!!

May 19, 2009

Hello everyone! It has turned out to be a pretty warm day!

Unfortunately, Seniorita Wesley was out again today for jury duty :-( Hopefully, she will be back tomorrow! We have our fingers crossed!

We started off our day with our dialogue journals, and word study sort. The green group definitely has a hard sort this week so don't be discouraged!!! Students then met on the carpet for morning meeting, which we discussed some ways we are going to be good during the day and how we will treat eachother.

As a class, we went into writing. About 1/4 of the class has finished their autobiographies, and we hope to have them done by tomorrow so we can celebrate on thursday! To help with the writing process, we changed up Daily 5 a bit today. they had 3 options to choose from: 1- Continue writing their autobiographies. 2- Word study speed sort. -or- 3- Read at your seat. Many of us decided to get farther ahead on our autobiographies!

Then Mrs. Keefer came in and read us a new story- Arthur Babysits! Tomorrow we will listen to the story again, and on Thursday, we should be able to respond to the story in our reading response journals! Also, Miss Wesley will be reading the spanish version to the a few friends who are usually with Miss Wesley tomorrow and they will respond in spanish!

Lunch was once again in the multipurpose room and it was very noisy in there!

We went outside for recess, and WOW did it get warm out compared to this morning!

We came back inside, and did a read aloud- If Mouse Went to School. This was a funny story!

After this, we did math. Miss Wesley's side is still playing different ways to get to 25 cents, and the kindergarteners learned a new game! We had 10 buttons in a cup and hid some under it and we counted the ones that were outside the cup to figure out how many were under the cup! After that, we played a quick game with addition facts in 2 teams.

Have a great night!

May 18, 2009

Good afternoon and happy Monday! We had an interesting day today!

We started off the morning with our new word study words and cut them out, and did a fast morning meeting! We went to the Elizabeth Clark dance performance at 9:30 this morning! We enjoyed it very much! We got back to our classroom around 10:30, and we did our word study groups! We did not have as much time as usual since we had the assembly, so we had to finish after recess.

Poem of the week was Sunflower.

Daily 5 did not go very well today. We were putting our hands on our friends and not being nice when it came to sorting our words.

Lunch today was in the multipurpose room which was a bit different!

The afternoon was a bit different as well. we came back and did our word study, read independently at our seats.

In science we observed our wheat plants! Many of ours have grown past the straws!

May 15, 2009

Good Afternoon! I hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine!

The students were verrrrryyyy chatty today :-( During dialogue journal and breakfast, we lost over 5 minutes of recess from talking loudly and not doing our work :-( It took a very long time for us to accomplish the things that we needed to this morning. We are hoping to finish up our autobiographies sometime early next week so we can celebrate! They are coming along very nicely.

The kindergarteners read "Daddy Snores" before writing today, and they will be writing their reading response to that next week! We thought the story was very funny, and most of us can relate to the loud snorring!! Haha.

Because of a little shorter morning, Daily 5 was spent gluing in our words, and reading to ourselves at our seats. Unfortunately, we were not able to have lunch in the classroom.

Recess was a bit shorter outside, and we came inside and did a read aloud in Spanish. We partnered up and did some activities!

We got to do a bit of show and tell, and Elianna P shared to us a story in Spanish!

Have a great weekend!

May 14, 2009

Good afternoon! We had a very chatty day today, and unfortunately, a couple friends had to go to the reflection chair :-(

Morning message was in spanish today, and we got to see a picture of Mrs. Helfer and baby matthew! We hope to see more pictures of them soon!

Today in word study we did look say cover write check. I hope we do very well on our word study test tomorrow!

In math, the red phinos we played with money and we had to get to 25 cents. Green gators played double compare, played a quick game for a bit of a break, and played out addition game :-)

In social studies we looked at maps on the computer- street maps, world maps, the map of the united states, and the map of the zoo!

May 13, 2009

Hello Everyone! Just a quick update for all those who were wondering~ Mrs. Helfer had baby Matthew yesterday! She had him at 8:17 am. He is 6 lbs 5 oz. He is little! Miss Wesley will be visiting her at the hospital this afternoon and will be coming back to share with us some pictures thursday morning!

This morning we did morning message in english, and are really getting into writing our Autobiographies. We should be done hopefully by early next week!

Daily 5 did not go so well today as there were lots of noises throughout the room and some friends were a bit off task. We sat on the carpet as a whole group and reflected on the Daily 5 and how we individually worked.

Recess was nice and we got to go outside!

We came back inside and wrote a nice note to Mrs. Helfer, so Miss Wesley can bring it to her at the hospital today. All students signed the bottom of it!

In math today, both sides were working on different types of story problems. Kindergarteners got to act out some of them as well and they really liked to do this.

If you have any questions about Mrs. Helfer, and baby Matthew, don't hesitate to e-mail us!

May 11, 2009

Happy Monday! It was nice to wake up to the lovely sunshine!

First graders started off their morning going to a Fire Hazard Assembly! Then they came back and we all did poem of the day, Daily 5, and we reviewed all of our word study words for the week. From there, the 1st graders went to the Hazard House! They learned many different ways to get out of the house safely incase of a fire:

Get down on your hands and knees and crawl to the door. Use the back of your hand to check to see if the door is hot. If it is, go towards the window! Always climb underneath the smoke. If your clothes catch on fire, STOP DROP AND ROLL!

We did a great job in lunch today, and enjoyed the playground for recess. We came back inside, and planted wheat seeds in a straw for science! Have your child explain what the different is between the way we planted the wheat seeds from the grass seeds!

In math today, the Red Rhinos used coin money to get to 25 cents. They came up with many ways to do this! The Green Gators had choice time- they could play collect 15, towers of 6, or grad a handful. Tomorrow we will be starting our Story Problem unit, and we will be acting out different word problems!

May 8, 2009

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has had a wonderful week! Unfortunately, we were very chatty today!

We started off the morning with our word study tests which went very well! During our daily five, our friends continued to practice reading to self and reading with a partner--a great way to practice this at home is to say to your child after reading a book "Check for understanding"--they know that when they hear that, they need to tell what they remember from that page. Another way to practice is to try "echo reading", where one friend reads the story, and the other friend has to read it exactly the way that they heard it. This a great way to practice reading fluently.

During math today, some of our friends played the game "Collect 25 cents", where we had to collect a total of 25 cents using different coins. In Miss Ras' math class, we played a game using cubes and dice, and had to build towers of 6. From that, we made number sentences!

Next week, we will be starting a new experiment in science!

Have a great weekend!

May 7, 2009

Good afternoon! Im sure it was a bit difficult for all of us to get up this morning with the rain! We are ready for the sun!

We started off the morning with morning meeting in spanish with Seniorita Wesley. We added some new words to our spanis dictionary, played a couple number games in spanish, and figured out different ways to get to 20 cents!

Writing went very well today! The kindergarteners finished filling in their boxes for their autobiographies. Hopefully we can start our table of contents tomorrow, and by next week, start our rough drafts! I am excited to learn more about the students! The first graders started their table of contents today and will start writing their introductions tomorrow!

Daily 5 went great today! All students were on task and almost all of us got our look say cover write check done! Tomorrow, I hope we do well on our word study tests!

This afternoon was a bit rough. We did read aloud about Puerto Rico, and went into Math. Unfortunately, we had 4 friends go to the reflection chair :-( We had a group discussion at the end of the day on how to be better listeners. I hope tomorrow goes better.

In math, the 1st graders started working with money! They had to come up with different ways to get to 25 cents. The kindergarteners continued to finish up their number sentences with the groups of 6, and we learned a new math game: Grabbing a handful. Students took turns grabbing a handful of certain objects, guessed how many there would be in the hand, and then counted them as a group to see the actual number.


Have a great evening and hopefully tomorrow will be sunny!

May 6, 2009

Hello Families!

Today was bit of a crazy day. The morning started off pretty well with getting dialogue journals done at 9am, and we went right into morning message. After morning message, we did a special activity for Mother's Day! (I hope everyone likes what we did!). This activity took most of the morning, and when the students were done, we went right into Daily 5. Daily 5 did not go as smoothly as normal, as most students were up and about wandering around and not doing the items on their checklist. Because of this, we had to sit at our seats for the remaining 15 minutes of Daily 5, and read to ourselves. I thanked the friends who were doing what they needed to but unfortunately we are a class community and need to start doing things as a team.

We had a great turn-around, and got all 4's in lunch. We enjoyed the warm weather and spent recess outside. We came inside and read a book, and went into math. Math went very well.

I am glad we had a better rest of the day and I hope for a great start tomorrow morning!

May 4th, 2009

Happy May! I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend and the nice weather! We had a fun filled monday!

We started off the day with cutting out our word sorts for the week. Morning meeting was in English today, and we are learning a lot of words!

We did our poem of the week: "First Comes a seed". A lot of words that were in the poem reminded us of science!

Daily 5 went really well. We got through all the word study groups and they all seem to know the words pretty well! Hopefully it shows on the tests for friday!

We had a quest speaker come in today and talk to us about bike safety. We learned it is very important to wear our helmets at ALL times, and to also protect ourselves with elbow and knee pads.

I was told we did "PERFECTLY!" in lunch today! It was nice to hear, especially on a monday :-)

We came back from lunch and got to run outside for a bit in the nice warmth!

We came inside, passed out monday folders, read a bit about Puerto Rico, and started math. Red Rhinos are working on story problems in spanish with crayons, the green gators are working on a new unit with squares and patterns! We hav a fun filled week for math coming up!

Have a great evening!

April 30, 2009

Happy last day of April! This month flew by!

We started off the last day of the week with our dialoge journals, and word study- look, say, cover, write, check. Then, considering we do not have school tomorrow, we took our spelling test this morning. They ALL did very well!

After our spelling test, we did our mourning meeting, and went into writing. We started to brainstorm ideas we can put into our autobiographies. Today we started to come up with words that describe "what i look like" and "where i live." They seemed to really enjoy writing about themselves!

After a short writing session, we went into reading workshop. Today we read "Franklin is Bossy", revisited the chart of adjectives we came up with that described franklin, and we went back to our seats and wrote a reading response. Most of us thought he was very bossy in the beginning because he was telling everyone what to do. At the end we thought he was appologetic because he realized he was wrong, appologized to his good friend, and was a better person.

We got all 4's in lunch today and went outside for recess. I did not realize it was supposed to be so warm outside!

We came back inside, glued our words in our word study notebooks, and got ready for science. In science we "mowed" our lawns to show the change that is made to the plants and how different it looks now. We will be starting a new experiment soon.

Math was a bit short today. Senorita Wesleys side continued playing the games in spanish and Miss Ras's side counted blocks by 5's to see how many it took to get across the rug- 120! It was a lot!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I hope it doesnt rain!

April 28, 2009

Hello, and welcome back from break! I hope everyone enjoyed the hot weather towards the end of the break!!!!

Monday was very crazy! We were all so excited to share what we did over break and where we went. During morning message, we were able to share what we did. We also had a quest reader come in who just happens to be Senorita Wesley's old elementary Art teacher! She read the whole class a book that she had published, and showed us the many steps in the book publishing process. In science, we got to see how much our grass has grown over break! Recess was extra nice being outside in the hot sun, and then some of us had extra time outside for Gym class.

Today we were sad to see the nice weather end. In the morning we wrote a thank you note to our guest reader from yesterday- we appreciate it so much! We started a new book for our reading responses this week- "Franklin is Bossy." We decided that he is VERY bossy in the beginnning, and changes towards the end! Daily 5 went very well today, and most of us got our word study done during this time!

We got all 4's in lunch after a not-so-good day yesterday. We were able to do some relay races in the multipurpose room after considering it started to rain.

We did a bit of social studies today and read about the different types of maps there are. We then went into math and learned some new games we can play! We will be continuing this for the next couple of days.

Have a good evening!

April 17, 2009

Good Afternoon! We had a great day today.

We started off our morning with morning meeting in english. We played a new game where we use the 100's chart, the teacher pulls off 5-7 numbers, and the students have to guess which ones are missing. Fun game!

We took our word study test which were very good!

In writing, we had another chance today to do free-write. Lots of the students want to share their stories when we come back from break!

Daily 5 went really well today. We all started with word study, and glued in our word sorts from this week. We all got this done!

The morning overall went very well, besides them being a bit chatty!

Lunch was a treat again today- we had it in the classroom! From here we had an extra long recess outside to run around in the sunlight! We came back in from recess and celebrated our April birthdays. Thank you to the parents who brought in the goodies!

We hope that everyone has a safe and wonderful Spring Break!!!

April 16, 2009 :-)

Happy Thursday! Hope everyone is doing well. We started off the day wonderfully! Morning message was in English. We observed that it was another Sunny day! We don't want the sunshine to ever end! Question of the day was about food- "Which food have you had this week?" The choices were pizza and sandwiches. Most of us have had pizza!

Writing today involved free-write. Students had about 30 minutes to write about anything that interests them! After that, we got together with our writing partners and shared what we wrote. We got back together as a whole group and came up with a whole list of ideas that we could write about. I will be posting this in the classroom for them to look at when they have no ideas to write about.

Reading workshop started off with us revisiting Wemberly Worried. Yesterday we wrote a reading response as a whole group. Today, we reviewed what we wrote and some of the words we came up with. Then, they went back to their seats and wrote in their response journals. These came out really well!

In the afternoon, the red rhinos and some kindergarten friends were working on word problems adding more than one number, to create a total of 10. We did a crayon problem where we had to come up with different number combinations that equaled ten. THe students did a really good job with this activity! The green gators did a good job with measuring different areas around the room! We did this as a whole group.


Have a wonderful night!

April 14, 2009!

Hello everyone! Once again, I hope we are all enjoying the lovely sun outside :-)

Today, Miss Wesley was out of the classroom for some training, but we had a great day!

We started off the morning with our dialog journals, and morning message in english. Our question of the day was "who reads stories to you?" Most of us said "ME!" Its great to know that the students are reading outside of school!

Next we did a bit of writing. We went back to our All About books and fixed them up, added some more color, added punctuation marks and edited our spelling. Tomorrow we will have a publishing celebration! They really have worked hard on these books and I am glad for them to share with everyone!

During Reading Workshop, We read Wemberly Worried again, and tomorrow as a whole class, we will be writing a reading response to how she changed as a character from the beginning of the book to the end.

Lunch- all 4's!

Recess- outside :-) We got out a lot of screaming, yelling, and running around at this time! They were quite tired when they got back into the room :-)

For science tomorrow, we will be planting grass!!! I am sure by the time they come back from spring break, we will all have little lawns to look at!

During math, we got to pick objects to to measure certain things with around the room. (example- one student picked markers and measured the rug, desk top, papers, white board, etc.) This was fun!!!

Hope you all have a great Tuesday :-)

April 13, 2009

Hello! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Today got off to a great start.

All the students walked into the room with new seats and carpet spots! With the new arrangement, it was not crazy at all!

Morning meeting was in spanish this morning, and our question of the day was "Have you ever flown on an airplane?" To our surprise, many of us have!

For the daily 5, we started off with the new poem of the week- "Chocolate Rabbit" and "Los sembradores". We circled the words that we know, and talked about how it made us feel. We also got new words for work study this week, and had a great daily 5!

We were so good in lunch, got all 4's, and we went outside for recess!! It's so nice out! We are going to try to go outside every day this week :-)

In math today, Miss Ras's side measured 4 lines throughout the room with different objects. (We used erasers, paperclips, crayons, and post-its). On Miss. Wesleys side we played off and on. It was a great math day!


Have a wonderful Monday!

Thursday March 9, 2009

Today we had some serious discussions about behavior. Some of our friends have had a difficult time walking in the hallway and listening while our teachers were at a meeting. We practiced walking in the hallway and reviewed the rules in our classroom. We know our friends are excited about the long weekend and Spring Break ahead, however we have important learning that we need to be doing in our classroom.
During the Daily 5, our friends practiced read to self and read to someone. Some our friends did a great job, while others are working on practicing what good readers do during this time.

In the afternoon, we read a book about Puerto Rico. We learned about El Coqui, and the song he sings. We learned that if you hear El Coqui singing his song, it will bring you good luck. In Puerto Rico, we also learned that baseball is an important sport, and fruits such as pineapple, apples, bananas, and coconuts are grown there.
During math today, our friends worked on quick images, and using number sentences to show how we added the numbers in our heads. The rest of our friends worked on their story problem assessment for Kindergarten.

We hope everyone has a safe and happy Easter weekend.

April 8, 2009

Hello! We had a much better day today! We started off the day with doing a bit more word study, and dialoge journals! We welcomed back Miss Wesley! We missed her a lot!

Daily 5 went a lot smoother today! Some of our friends had checklists that were already predetermined on what they were going to do for the day. This seemed to work for us very well! If they stay on task during daily 5 for a couple days, they can decide on their own daily 5 schedule.

Writing workshop was a bit shorter today. We shared our reading response journals in 3 different groups. Tomorrow we will be reading a new book to respond to!

In math, the Easter bunny came! Students were divided into 6 groups. They counted the number of eggs they were given, and then they "went to sleep." The easter bunny came around and took eggs from them!!! They had to figure out how many were left, and how many the easter bunny took from them.

We changed around the room at the end of the day while the students were at specials, and seats will be changed for Monday... We will update you on how this goes!!

April 7, 2009

Hello! The last two days have been crazy! Senorita Wesley was out sick on Monday, and today, but we hope to have her back on Wednesday!

We started off our day with doubling up on word study. We did our activities for Tuesday AND wednesday. After that, we went through morning meeting. We did our weather graph and we are all hoping its the last day that it snows in April! Then we went straight into Reading Workshop. Today was a little rough :-( Many of our friends were off task and had to be reminded to stay on task.

In science we studied our plants in the hall way and in the classroom. The ones in the bags have GROWN A LOT!!!!!

Writing workshop, we wrote about Easter and what we do at Easter time. We are getting excited for the 3 day weekend! ( and all the chocolate!)

Math was different! We had to sort dots in specific combinations. On mrs Helfers side, we played a game where we learned new subtracting skills! There was a lot group work involved, and I think we need to do this more often!

At the end of the day, we sat together on the carpet and brainstormed some thing that we can do tomorrow so our day goes smoother. We came up with:
We are going to make better choices on Daily 5, we need to learn how to share within our groups, take turns, use nice words to friends, not hurt other peoples feelings,be nice to friends, respect our tools.

April 3, 2009!

Hello! Today is icky out! But we were very busy inside our classroom!

In word study we glued our word sorts and took our word study test. They did very well!

During calendar, we did our weather graph and realized it has not rained in a long time!

Daily 5 was not so well today :-( We discussed that we need to work on not fooling around, stay in one spot for a period of time, and keep our listening station neat! We want to remember to "get lost in our books!"

In math, on Mrs. Helfer's side, we took a math assessment on everything we have learned so far. Mrs. Wesleys side made cards with their families on them, cut them out, and got with our partners and put them in order from youngest to oldest.

Since we had a good week in the cafeteria, we got to eat lunch in the classroom. We had a bit of extra time so we read a scholastic issue in spanish! After that, Mrs. Wesley read to the class "The Teacher From the Black Lagoon".

Have a great weekend!

Hello! It is absolutely beautiful outside today! We started off the day with morning meeting in Spanish. From there, we did writing workshop and Mrs. Helfer's class finished their All About books! Right now they are working on a piece of writing that interests them.

In Reading Workshop, we reviewed some of the character traits of Ira in Ira Sleeps Over. The students said that he was scared, embarassed, happy, confused, and upset. Each student had to pick one trait, and go back and write in their journals why they feel that this trait describes Ira the best.

We got all 4's in lunch today!

The students went out into the hallway in groups to look at their seeds in a bag. Almost all of them are growing! While some students were in the hallway, the others were working on their word study- look, say, cover, write, check. Once this was done, we all went outside to enjoy this lovely weather!!!

After recess, we came inside to work on math. We cut out the family portraits, and got into groups to organze them from youngest to oldest. We will be doing more with this tomorrow. Enjoy the weather!

Wednesday, April 1st

Today was an exciting April Fool's Day! We tricked the students this morning and had their morning message in....German! They had a hard time reading the message, and thought it was funny! We then did our message in the language we know--Spanish! Throughout the day we have many students telling us their April Fool's jokes!

In writing workshop, we finished up our All About books. Only a few more to finish!

For Word Study, the student's did a speed sort, and no-peek write. Today we switched things up a bit and did math in the morning. On Senorita's math side they worked on skip counting and word problems. On Mrs. Helfer's, we did a story problem to start off the day which was very tricky! Tomorrow we will be working with different ages of our families and putting them into sequential order.

We read through "Ira Sleeps Over" again today and did a web on his character traits. Some of the words they came up with to describe Ira were embarassed, upset, happy, and confused. Tomorrow they will be doing a reading response to the character Ira in their Writing About Reading Notebooks.

In science, we went out into the hallway to take more observations of our seeds in the bag. They are growing!! The students really enjoy seeing something like this. We also came up with a word bank for plants and the various words we have come familiar with in the past couple weeks.

It was a great day!

Monday, March 30th, 2009

We had a great Monday! In the morning, our question of the day was: How do you feel when you see an insect? We learned that 6 of our friends feel scared, 31 of our friends feel excited, and 1 friend felt sad. We showed this by writing the following mathematical sentences: 1 < 6, and 6 < 31.

We read our poems for the week: some of our friends read the poem, "Rain", which was about things that you can do in the rain, while other friends read "El viento", and practiced words like "hojitas y semillitas". During the daily 5, our friends learned their new word study words for the week, and practiced saying the words and putting them into their groups.

In the afternoon, we did a read aloud called New Plants, and learned about how seeds travel. We learned that seeds can travel in many different ways--on our clothes and sneakers, on our pets' fur, by the wind, and by animals. We learned that this is how weeds grow. We then observed our plants, recording our observations, and labeling the parts of the plant on our diagrams--leaves, stems, buds, and flowers.

In math today, the green gators practiced solving word problems with addition, and showing our work using the white boards. We then completed an assessment about which group has more, and how many more.

We finished our day reading our Weekly Reader in Spanish, learning about Insects and what makes an insect--we learned that insects have three major parts to their body, they have 6 legs, and they have 2 antenna. We then did an activity with the Weekly Reader, drawing an insect of our own, and completing drawings of other insects that were missing legs. We had to figure out how many were missing, and how many we needed to draw to have a total of 6 legs. They did a great job with this activity!

Friday, March 27th, 2009

Today was a busy day! In the morning, we wrote in our dialogue journals. We are working on adding more and more information to them, and making sure we include the proper letter format, including the date, the greeting (dear_______), and closing (love, _____________). After that, our friends glued in their word study sorts, and took our word study test.

We finished the research component of our All-About Books, and most of our friends began writing their reports, including a table of contents, page numbers, and interesting titles for our chapters in our books. We are also working on including diagrams that are labeled with important information.

We also read aloud the story Chysanthemum in Spanish, and the students helped out with certain words, like Crisantemo, perfecto, and others. We then wrote in our Writing about Reading notebooks, and chose a characterstic of Chrysanthemum that we thought best described her. In our notebooks, we started our response with...I think Chrysanthemum was _____________ because ___________. Our friends did a great job writing their responses!

We also concluded our experiment with corn, bean, pea, and carrot seeds, by placing them in a bag with a wet paper towel. We are excited to see what will grow (if anything will grow) over the weekend!

We continued our observations of our brassica plants, and have observed buds, leaves, stems, and even flowers! We will talk about pollination and actually pollinate our flowers next week!

Friday, March 20th

Today was another busy Friday! In the morning, we did our morning message in English. Our question of the day was: Have you ever slept in a tent? We learned that 25 of our friends have slept in a tent, while 14 have not. We showed this using the mathematical expression: 25 > 14, and 14 < 25. Also in the morning, we continued gathering information about our All-About books and the animals we chose. We will be finishing up the research next week and begin writing our All-About books.

In word study, we glued in our sorts, and wrote out how we sorted our words. We also took our word study test. We are really working on practicing these words, to help us in reading and spelling the words correctly in our writing as well.

During math, we finished our survey questions, and created visual representations to show our questions, and the results of our surveys. We also used mathematical expressions to show which was greater and which was less than.

At the end of the day, we did a SPanish read aloud, Como crece la hierba? We reviewed the different terms for the parts of a plant, including: roots (raices), stem (tallo), leaves (hojas), and flowers (flores). Ask your child which of these words they remember!

Also--we will be sending a note home with the students on Monday, as Mrs. Helfer will be out again next week as well. Her mother has been in the hospital since last Friday, and she has been very busy taking care of her. We are hoping to see her the last week in March, but we will keep you posted. She wanted to reassure all of you that she and the baby are doing fine, and not to worry. She misses everyone, and hopes to see us all very soon! Thank you very much for your care and concern.

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Today was another busy day! In the morning, our question of the day was: Como llegaste hoy a la escuela? How did you get to school today? We learned that 30 of our friends came by bus, 7 came by car, and zero friends came by boat. We showed this using the following equations: 30 > 7, and 7 > 0.

Also in the morning, we continued working on our very own All-About books. The students are great researchers as they gather information from books they have read, and show that information using a graphic organizer.

To finish out the morning, we continued with math, where the first graders continued to work with balanced equations, making each side equal to the other. Both groups are working on survey questions as well, asking their classmates a question, and recording their results. When they finish, they will create a poster to show their results to the class.

In the afternoon, Mrs. Keefer came in to work with us again on writing about characters that we read about. Today, we read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and discussed different characterstics of Alexander. In our Writing About Reading notebooks, our friends chose the best word to describe Alexander, and wrote down reasons why they thought he was frustrated, angry, mad, or disorganized.

We also did our word study activity for the day, which was look, say, cover, write, check. We are getting really good at doing this, and focusing on our work as it helps us prepare for our word study tests on Fridays!

Wednesday, March 18th 2009

Today was another busy day! In the morning, our question of the day was: Tienes gato? (Do you have a cat?) We learned that 13 of our friends do have cats at home, with 23 friends do not have cats at home. We showed this using the following equations: 13 < 23, and 23 > 13. Also during the morning we began our very own all-about books on animals that we chose. Our researchers worked very hard to begin collecting information about their animals, reading books about butterflies, sharks, tigers, lions, and snakes, and putting that information on a graphic organizer, which will help them when writing their final reports. Also during the morning we had math, where the 1st graders continued to work on balanced equations, and using the base of 10. Our kindergartners worked on word problems in spanish, and deciding if we need to add or subtract, and efficient strategies to help us solve these problems.

In the afternoon, we had Mrs. Keefer come in to work with us on something new--we are using Writing About Reading Journals to help us record our thoughts about books that we read. Today, we read Miss Nelson is Missing/Senorita Nelson Ha Desaparecido, and learned about characteristics of different characters in the story. We created a character web about Miss Viola Swamp/La Senorita Lola Pantana, and wrote down characterstics of Miss Viola Swamp--she's mean, she's strict, she's serious, and she is grumpy. Then, in our notebooks, we wrote down WHY we thought that described her. Our friends did a great job including reasons like: she gave the students lots of homework, she told them to keep their mouths closed, they never had story time, and many more! Ask your child what characteristic they chose to describe Viola Swamp, and why they chose that word. After that, we observed our plants, and are continuing to record our observations by drawing what we see, and labeling our diagrams to include the important parts of the plant, including the stem, leaves, and soil. The students are becoming great observers as well! Ask your child what they know about plants, and what they learned about Leaves today during our Read Aloud!

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Today was another busy day! In the morning, our question of the day was: Did your Brassica Seed start to grow? We learned that more of our friends' plants grew than did not. We continued to practice using money, and how much each of the coins are worth. We made 13 cents today using pennies, nickels, and dimes.

We did our word study tests and glued our sorts into our noteooks during the morning as well. During Writing time, we had free writing time and had a choice of writing an all-about book, writing a how-to book, or writing a small moment.

In Math today, the green gators played a game Same/Different, where they were given two objects and they had to compare how they were the same, and how they were different. The red rhinos played Guess my rule with buttons and lids, and had to figure out what their partner's rule was--some had designs, some had writing, and for the buttons--some had two holes, some had four holes, and they also sorted by color and by size.

We also had our March Birthday celebration, and sang Happy Birthday to Miranda, Brynn, Elizabeth W., and D'Andre, who all celebrate their birthdays this month. We enjoyed some yummy treats that they brought in too!

In the afternoon, the friends that have social studies with Senorita Wesley practiced naming different items around the room, and read a map key to help us when we create our own maps of the classroom. They did a great job drawing in symbols and locating different symbols on the map key.

The rest of our friends read a book about Maps and Globes, and talked about different symbols in our community, and what those symbols represent. They also practiced a fun song, too.

We finished off our afternoon with a read-aloud, as we read the book, Yo puedo leer con mis ojos cerrados (I can read with my eyes closed), by Dr. Seuss. We enjoyed listening to the funny words and things that Dr. Seuss writes about!

Parents--just a reminder--please send in your child's Writing About Reading notebooks to school by this coming Monday, March 16th, as we will be using these on Tuesday! Thank you so much for your continued help and support!

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Today was a great day! In the morning, our question of the day was: Te gusta bailar? Do you like to dance? We learned that ALL of our friends like to dance, and we showed this with two number sentences: 36 > 0, and ) < 36. We also learned a new song, Diez deditos, to help us practice counting up and down from 0-10, and 10-0.

During reading workshop, Senorita Wesley's friends practiced fact and opinion, and talked about the differences between the two--a fact is something you can prove, and opinion is what someone thinks or feels. Mrs. Helfer's friends learned a new way to remember/recall information from a non-fiction book. Mrs. Helfer modeled how to use a retelling web to take notes and then retell information from the texts. Soon Mrs. Helfer's friends will be creating retelling webs all by themselves. We ended our morning with our word study routine for the day...Look, Say, Cover, Write Check.

This afternoon we had some recess time in the multipurpose room. When we got back to our classroom Senorita Wesley read us a book called Como Crecn Los Tulipnas (How do Tulips Grow?). We learned the different parts of a plant including stem, leaves, and roots. After our read aloud we all became botanist and studies our brassica plants. Some students noticed many changes had taken place over the past few days. Ask your child to share with you what observations they have made about their brassica plants. We also read a non-fiction text about what plants need to grow and survive. We learned that plants need water, soil, nutrients, light, and space to grow.

Tuesday, March 10th

This morning our morning message was in spanish. The question of the day was "What Would You Want To Grow In Your Garden." We learned that the greatest number of students in our class would grow corn and the least amount of students would grow peas. After morning message we started writing workshop, and finished up our All About Spiders books, including captions and and a Table of Contents.

After Writing workshop, we went to an assembly--Mrs. McPuppet was very exciting! We listened to her tell stories using puppets, shadow puppets, we sang songs, and some teachers went on stage for a dance performance.

In the afternoon, some of our friends listened to a story Places in My Community, learning about the different places in the community, and what we do in those places, like the park, stores, houses, and schools. The rest of our friends read in spanish about how to use a map legend, called a leyenda, and identified the symbols and what they stand for in the map legend. During math today, the green gators played grab and count, and practiced counting buttons, using efficient ways of counting (counting by 2's, or counting by 10's). The red rhinos today practiced writing balanced equations, and showing how each side can be balanced and equal each other. They also contiued to learn how objects can be sorted and by which attributes they can be grouped by. We played Guess My Rule with people/

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Today was a busy day! Our question of the day was: What is your favorite zoo animal--bear, monkey, lion, or elephant? We learned that more friends liked the bear than any other animal. We practiced counting by 2's up to 40, and we're working on counting higher as well.

During Reading Workshop, we practiced our Daily 5, and learned our Word Study sorts for the week. We continue to review making good learning choices and what a good learning partner does.

During Writing Workshop, we worked on our final copies of our Class book All About Spiders. Some of our friends did a great job including diagrams of spiders, labeling the important parts, and captions underneath their pictures to show what is going on. We even had some friends try writing some sentences in Spanish, too!

During read aloud today, we read La Gallinita Roja, or The Little Red Hen, in Spanish. Our friends did a great job showing their understanding of the story, and we made puppets to help us act out the story. Ask your child to tell you the characters in the story. Tomorrow, we will have Mrs. McPuppet read us the story The Little Red Hen, and we will talk about how they are similar and different.

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Today was a busy day! In the morning, our question of the day was; Have you ever planted a seed before? We learned that 29 of our friends have planted seeds, while 8 of our friends have not. We wrote a mathematical sentence to show this: 29 > 8. During reading workshop, we practiced visualizing when reading non-fiction. The green gators practiced visualizing with their book about sharks, and drew a picture when they first started reading, and drew another one after they had learned more information about sharks. The red rhinos continued reading about animals that hibernate and practiced drawing what they visualized in their heads.

During Social Studies today, some of the friends learned the difference between maps and globes, and the word for round (redondo), and flat (plano). We looked at a map legend, and talked about teh different symbols that stand for different places on the map, including trees (el parque), and different buildings to show stores (tiendas) the school (escuela), houses (casas), and recyclying center (centro de reciclaje). We then practiced locating different places on a map, and put our labels on our maps.

In Science today, we learned about seeds, and planted our very own Brassica seeds. We learned that plants need water, sunlight and soil to grow, and we are very excited to see what will happen to our seeds over the weekend. We filled out our calendar to record our observations of our plants, and wrote in our calendars today "Planted our brassica seeds".

Ask your child what they enjoyed the most today!

Wednesday, March 4th

Another busy day for the students in C-7 & C-8. We started the morning with morning meeting. Our meeitng today was in Spanish. Our question of the day today was do you like to dance. We learned that there is a greater number of people in our class that like to dance, than the number of people who do not like to dance. We wrote a number sentence to show this 30 > 6, and 6 < 30. During our reading workshop minilesson we practiced vizualizing the information that we read in non-ficition books. The green gators listened to a book about sharks and tried to make a picture in their mind of what the shark looked like and what it was doing. Ask your child to descibe their vizualization. The red rhinos also practiced vizualizing. They listened to a book about Hibernation, and drew the pictures that they "saw" in their minds, and compared their drawings to the photographs in the book.

We headed to the multipurpose room for some much needed recess. We had fun racing eachother! After our recess we returned to the classroom for read aloud. Today we listened to the story "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late." We were excited to see another example of a character in a book using persuasion to get their way. We were able to identify the pigeons claim (what he wanted") and his evidnece (why he thought he should get what he wanted). Ask your child to tell you what the piegon's claim and evidence was. After our read aloud we spent some time practicing sorting our words as fast as we could in our word study routine...speed sort. Then, during math, the red rhinos worked on identifying the place value of different numbers and played the game guess my rule. The green gators counted the number of chairs in our classroom, and practiced saying numbers through 35 in Spanish. We are continuing to practice counting by 10's and by 2's as well. Please ask your child to show you how they can count efficiently!

Thursday, February 26th 2009

Today was a busy day! Our question of the day was: Which animal would you rather have as a pet: an elephant, a pig, or a bear? We learned that 24 of our friends would rather have a pig, 4 of our friends would like an elephant, and 8 of our friends preferred a bear. We also practiced writing math sentences to show that 24 is greater than 4, 8 is greater than 4, and 8 is less than 24.

During Reading Workshop, we learned a new strategy to help us when reading non-fiction books, visualizing, where we make pictures in our heads to help us understand what the author is telling us. We practiced reading one page at a time, and then drawing what we heard. After we drew what we pictured in our head, we compared it to what the illustrator drew, and talked about similarities or differences.

During Writing Workshop, we gathered all of our notes that we have been taking about Spiders and each of us chose three important facts that we are going to use to include in our class book All About Spiders. We then wrote out our sentences on sentence strips, which will help us when we organize our facts to put the information into various sections.

Our word study activity for Thursday is Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check. We continued to practice this, as some of our friends are still working on writing them one word at a time: first using the pencil, then in crayon, and finally in marker. This is a great practice for our word study tests, which are on Fridays.

Wednesday, February 25th

This morning our question of the day was can you do a sumersult. We seem to have some gymnist in our class beacsue we found out that 31 of our friends can do a sumersult and only 7 can not. We wrote a number sentence to show that 31 is greater than 7 (31>7) and that 7 is less than 31 (7<31). During our morning meeting we also tried to make 25 cents using coins. One friend used two dimes and a nickel and another friend was able to make 25 cents using a quarter. After our morning meeting we had our reading workshop mini lesson. We once again worked on taking notes after listing to a non-fiction story and using the illustrations in the text to gather information.We are learning so many interesting things about Spiders that we will be able to add to our class report about spiders.

We started the afternoon off with a read aloud. Today was a special story, one of our classmates favorites...Alexander and the terrible, no good, very bad day. We learned that many of us have had days just as bad as Alexanders. After our read aloud we practice our word study words by sorting our words as quickly as we could. It was then time for math. Today the red rhinos practiced solving a story problem. The number sentence for today's problem was three addends! We discussed efficient strategies for solving these problems such as looking for the addends that can be combined to equal ten or looking for doubles. After our story problem, we had a number talk about place value. The students used the place value mats to actually build numbers. Today we built the number 6 and the number 11. After our number talk the students had a chance to play the new game "Guess my secrete rule." Students sorted shaped into groups with similar attributes and their partner had to try to guess why they sorted them like they did. In math, the green gators worked on counting by 1's and 2's to thirty two and identifying the parts of the body (in Spanish).

Tuesday, Februuary 24th

Today was the 100th day of school. We celebrated this special day by working with the number 100 all day. We started our morning working on making marshmellow consturctions. We worked with a partner to use toothpicks and marshmellows to construct something special. Of course we had to use 100 marshmellows! There were many different creative structures. Some friends constructed apartment buildings, hoses, and there was even a jungle house. After our constructions were complete we started to work on our 100th Day books. We wrote what we would like to have 100 of and what we wouldbuy if we had 100 dollars. On our way to lunch we took some time to admire of the amazing 100th Day collections that have been displayed in our school. We saw 100 cotton balls, 100 pony-tails, and 100 puzzle pieces.

We started our afternoon off with a trip to the multipurpose room where we did 100 excercises. We did 10 different exercises 10 times. Ask your child what excercises we did. When we returned to the classroom we read a book called The 100th Day Of School. Then we started another project working with 100 things. We made necklaces out of 100 fruit loops. Many friends ate their necklace as a snack before they had a chance to bring it home. We ended our day with a special 100 day snack. We made trail mix. We used 10 different foods and put 10 of each thing in our snack. It was delicious! Ask your child to share with you what was in their trail mix. Overall we had a fantastic 100th day celebration. We are looking forward many more exciting days of learning.

Monday, February 23rd

We were so excited to be back to school today. We started our day with our word study routine for Mondays which is cutting out our new word sorts. Our question of the day today was "Did you travel over the break." We learned that 14 friends did travel over the break and 24 friends did not. We decided that there was a greater number of friends in our class that did not travel over the break. Next, we read a new poem. In English we read a poem all about the night called "Night Sky." In Spanish some friends read the poem "Inviero es Paesia" which was all about the four seasons. During the daily five, we met with our teachers to learn our new word study patterns. Lunch was special today because we got to eat in our classroom. Our teachers were very impressed with our "lunch" behavior.

After lunch, we finished our non-fiction book about Sea Turtles. We learned that there is a sea turtle hospital where the turtles can go when they are hurt or sick. We also learned that sea turtles can die from pollution like plastic bags and garbage. In handwriting the green gators practiced writing the letter A and the red rhinos practiced the letter m. Today we started new math units. The green gators worked on solving how many people were in their math class. The red rhinos, learned a new game called guess My rule. The object of the game is to sort shapes by similar attributes. We are excited because tomorrow is the 100th day of school!