The End of January
Much ado about many things. A week that saw two visitors to the classroom, a room full of flag books, some "squid bait" chase off a couple of whalers, and a 100's chart begin to populate.
As is customary, we began the week with a visit from Julianne who this time helped us to make flag books.
Some quite reading time
Math Workshop
The whole class learned about the "nine's house" and the "doubles house". In doing so they practiced the different ways 2 one digit numbers can combine to make 10, and the result when you double two numbers.
Monday's News writing
Seed stories
In Writer's Workshop students are working to zoom in on small details and explore them more fully.
Writer's Workshop sharing
Morning Greeting
Each morning we greet each other one way or another from the simple (passing a greeting around the circle) to something more complex (adding the dots of your domino and greeting those with identical sums).
Bubble Space
This week we have been talking about personal space and learning language to remind people of our physical space needs.
The 100's Chart
We have begun to fill our 100's chart and will continue to draw numbers until we have all 100 on the wall. This is a great way for children to see numbers in relation to one another and primes their awareness of patterns in our numbering system. Once the chart is complete we will play the game "Guess My Rule" where someone tags certain numbers and the class must determine the governing rule (e.g. all the numbers that contain the digit 5).
Reader's Workshop
We are focusing on retelling this month and have begun to talk about what goes in to a good retelling. We are learning how to include just enough information that the listener will understand the story.
Buddies
This week we sat back-to-back with our buddies and each member of the pair described a picture he/she was drawing while the listener drew a picture based on those instructions without looking. Everyone was very intrigued by the results.
Reader's Workshop
working on more consonant blends
practice forming the letter K
Whale Work
We continued our whale investigation this week.
whale habitat
Whale story plays
Oliver dictated a highly engaging tale of whales and whaling
the opening birthing scene
Whale tussles with a giant squid (much gentler than it looks)
The "squid bait" runs down the whalers
The players take a (impressively synchronized) bow
Blubber Glove
We are learning about many aspects of the whale anatomy, one of which is their blubber. Students are experiencing the difference that wearing a "blubber" lined glove makes when immersing your hand in ice water.
Fresh catch- a barnacle spangled Gray Whale
It ends with Billy taking up residence inside the beast.
Free Friday & Crazy Hat and Hair Day
Inigo's mom, Ginger, came in to discuss different modes of representation in art. The children then went on to build collages on canvases they had prepared last week. Ginger provided photographs of whales, drawings of whales, and the printed word whale for the collage. We discussed how any one of them express whaleness but to varying degrees.
Inigo sharing his whirlpool
Tracing a humpback whale
Writing a whale play
Up close and personal with assorted classroom objects (photos courtesy of M. Alexander)
All Best,
.Ben & Tanja
No comments:
Post a Comment