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!