Monday, March 29th

After a nice relaxing weekend, we were back at it, working hard today. This morning we came in and cut out our new sorts for word study. The students were excited to see that they were put into new word study groups after their last word study assessment. After our morning work was completed, we had our morning meeting in English. We helped edit the morning message, talked about the calender, and completed our math routines. Today's question of the day was Did you go out to eat over the weekend? We learned that a greater number of students in our class did go out to eat and a fewer number of students did not go out to eat. Today, the green gators reading workshop minilesson again focused on identifying the characters most important action and why that action was important. They did a GREAT job of writing about this in their writing about reading notebook. The green gators read a poem called Spring Magic and discussed what mental images the poem gave them

We started our afternoon with a read aloud. Today we read the story the Wolf that cried boy. After reading we discussed the character's most important action and why it was important. Ask your child to share what lesson they learned from this book. In mathematics, the green gators solved story problems with money and discussed strategies for solving them. The red rhinos were busy working on the expanded method and the ungroup first methods for solving two digit subtraction problems.

Monday, March 22nd

A busy day in C-7 and C-8 today. Upon arrival into our classroom, we did our morning routines and cut out our new word study words. After our morning work, we has our morning meeting. Today's meeting was in Spanish. We helped write morning message, talked about the calender, and completed our daily math routines. Our question of the day was How many buttons are you wearing on your clothes today. We learned that a greater number of students were wearing 1 button on their clothing. After our morning meeting, we had minilessos. The green gators read the poem Wind Song and talked about words how the author showed feelings in the poem. The red rhinos began to work on preparing for their upcoming district reading tests (the CET). We learned startegies for taking multiple choice tests. We also enjoyed having Mr. Perez (Jarel's dad) visit this morning and look forward to seeing him again later in the week.


We started our afternoon, with our read alouds. The green gators read the story Dr. DeSoto and the Red Rhinos read the story My Brother Dan's Delicious. Ask your child to share with you what these stories were about.In mathematics, the green gators worked making partners of 10 using coins and also making partners of one hundred using pennies. The red rhinos continue to work on subtracting two digit numbers. Today we learned a new strategy for subtracting called the expanded method. Ask your child to show you how this strategy works.

Wednesday, March 10th

Another busy leanring day in C-& and C-8. Today we started our day with a message in our dialogue journals. We reponded to our message and then started our morning meeting. Today's meeting was in Spanish. We helped edit the morning message, talked about the calender, and did our daily math routines. Today's question of the day was Which food do you like best? we learned that most friends like peas the least and spaghetti the most. After our morning meeting we split into two groups...boys and girls. The girls stayed in the classroom and listened to the taped interviews that they had with Mrs. Zodarecky in preperation for writing their chapeter to go into our biography. The boys went to the bookroom and read the story "My Brother Dan is Delicious". We practiced reading the title and looking at the pictures, as well as using information from the text to make inferences about the characters. After writing workshop, we had a reading workshop minilesson. We contniued learning about making inferences to help us better understand the stories that we are reading. The Second Grade friends practiced making inferences using the story "Tight Times", and the First Grade friends read the book "Fly Away Home" by Eve Bunting. We have been practicing making inferences by using what we know and our experiences, plus clues from the text and pictures to come up with new ideas, or inferences. This afternoon, we did a read aloud on Clouds, or Nubes, in spanish, and learned the terms for meterologist (meterologo), cloud (nube), as well as the three different kinds of clouds we are learning about: cumulus (cumulo), cirrus (cirro), and stratus (estratos). After read aloud we had math. The Green Gators practiced counting different objects, and grouping them in groups of tens and ones to count easier, as well as show the correct amount using our secret code cards. Students had to identify how many tens and how many ones were in the number. At home, you can practice this with your child by asking them to read a 2-digit number, such as 95, and ask them: How many tens are in the number (9), how many ones (5).
The Red Rhinos practiced different ways to make $1.00 using different coin combinations.

At the end of the day, we finished up with science, where we reviewed the different types of clouds we can see in the sky. We looked at different cloud pictures and practiced identifying what kinds of clouds they were, what kind of weather they would bring, and what those cloud descriptions would be (big and fluffy, light and wispy, thick and like a blanket, etc.). Ask your child to look in the sky and tell you what kinds of clouds they are! We also put our rain gauge outside the school, and will start to measure the rain on a daily basis and report this information during our morning meeting each day. What a busy but great day of learning we had in C-7 and C-8!

Friday, March 5th

This morning the students in C-7 and C-8 started their day with a message in their dialogue journals. They read the message and then wrote a response. After completing the journal response, the students took their word study assessments. They then participated in a Spanish morning message. They helped to edit the morning message, talked about the calender, and completed their math routines. We ended the morning with a visit from Fireman Dean. Fireman Dean brought in the Hazord House to help us learn about fire safety. Ask your child to share with you what they learned about fire safety from his visit.

This afternoon, we had the daily 5 and glued in our word sorts. Today Mrs. Helfer read us the story what are you so grumpy about? Their were many funny things that made the character in this story grumpy. Ask your child to tell you all about his story. We ended the day with mathematics. The red rhinos took their end of the unit assessment and the green gators played memory match and wrote their own number riddles.

Thursday, March 4th

What a great learning day we had today. We started our morning with making words. Today we tries to make smaller words from the big words NORMAL and CINTURON. Ask your child to share with you what words they were able to make from these big words. Our morning meeting was in English today. We helped edit the morning message fixing the capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. We then discussed the calender and completed our math routines. Our question of the day was Which book would you rather read. We learned that a greater number of people would read The Dog That Cried Wolf. After our morning meeting, we had a Reading Workshop mini lesson. Today we continued to work on the skill of inferring the meaning of unknown words within books that we read. After our mini lesson, we worked on our word study routine ("If I can spell") and then completed our daily 5 work.

We started our afternoon with a read aloud. Today we finished reading the book Flat Stanley in Space. Ask your child to share with you how this book ended. After our read aloud, we listened to our last reader's theater group perform. After that, we got into our mathematics groups. The green gator played "memory match" the goal was to find the matching number, picture representation, and equation. The red rhinos worked on completing a table and adding two digit numbers. Tomorrow the red rhinos will take their end of the unit assessment. We ended our day with science. We read a book called "Why does it Rain?" and began to look at different types of clouds.

Wednesday, March 3rd

Another busy day for the students in C-7 and C-8. We started our day with reading a message from our teachers in our dialogue journals. Ask your child to tell you what their message said today. Our morning message was in Spanish. We helped edit the morning message, talked about the calender, and completed our math routines. Our question of the day was Do you like to sing? We learned that there is a greater number of students that do like to sing and a fewer number of students that do not like to sing. After morning meeting, we enjoyed a few more reader's theater performances. We ended our morning with Reading Workshop. Today we had a mini lesson on how good reader's infer the meaning of words. After our mini lesson, we worked on our word study routines and enjoyed our daily 5 choices.

We started our afternoon with a read aloud. We were very excited to hear the conclusion of Enemy Pie. After we read we discussed two ways that readers respond to books...talking about how the character changed throughout the story and talking about a lesson that can be learned from the story. The students then wrote about this. Ask your child to discuss one of these aspects of the book. After our writing about reading, we started math. Today the green gators worked on the make a ten strategy and also prepared for a new math game. The red rhinos worked on creating a horizontal bar graph using information from a vertical bar graph, and making comparisons. We then looked at a table with two-digit numbers, and practiced adding two-digit numbers using information from the table.
We had a busy and productive day!

Monday, March 1st

Welcome March!!! We were off and running after a extra long weekend. Our morning meeting was in Spanish Today. We helped edit the morning message, talked about the calender, and completed our math routines. Today's questiopn of the day was Are your waering Somehting Blue Today? After morning meeting, we started our daily 5 routines and met with our teachers to learn our new word study pattern. Try someting new tonight...Ask your child to teach you how to sort their words. This will really force them to demonstrate their understanding of the "grammer" rule behind their sort.

We started our afternoon with a little Flat Stanley news. We saw some pictures from Ms. Wesley's Flat Stanley's trip to Key west and heard about Flat Stanley's trip to Puerto Rico with Brandon. After that, we enjoyed some of our friends Reader's Theater performances. We ended our afternoon with mathematics. The red rhinos completed a partner activity. They worked with a partner to read bar and circle graphs and answer questions comparing information. The red rhinos also created their own comparisions (all in spanish:>). Today in mathematics the green gators worked on number sentneces that contained ones, tens, and both. We learned that knowig simple facts such as 3+5 can help us when we are working on solving problems with bigger numbers such as 30+50.