We love "shake breaks" in our classroom! Shake breaks are times when we dance and follow directions how to do the movements while listening to a song. Sometimes, we use shake breaks as a reward when we fill our buzzy jar, and sometimes, we we dance a short dance to break up a longer class or as a surprise in the middle of class when all the students have worked hard and completed all their work.Here are two videos so you can see us all dance. You can also access these songs and dances at home by simply going to our dancing page on my wiki (I also linked it here for your convenience)
This week in reading, the students continued working on various strategies to make their reading more fluent and their comprehension deeper. As a class, we discussed the importance of making personal connections to our books. We learned how we can "stop and jot" these connections on post-it notes and we read many books highlighting strong personalities or experiences. For example, we read "Wemberly Worried" by Kevin Henkes. The students discussed a time when they too were worried, just like the main character Wemberly. The students wrote about these experiences and they also recovered "Power Rocks" with positive and encouraging words on them to hold when they feel worried. If your child lost his/her power rock already, let me know and I will send home another. The students also blogged about their personal connections. If you are interested in seeing their posts, please visit our KidBlog and log in. I posted an online real aloud of Kevin Henkes's book "Chester's Way". The students were asked to thinks about the different characters in this story and share a personal connection. We will continue working on different reading strategies in our guided reading groups next week as well. Thank you all for reading with your child at home every night!
In writing this week, the students started a new unit called "Small Moment Writing." Small moment writing is very similar to our previous unit in that they are both about personal narratives. In small moment writing, however, the students are taught how to choose one element, or moment, in their story and stretch it our over several pages. They will learn to use interesting adjectives to describe the setting and the characters in their stories. They will also learn how to use dialogue effectively; sometimes as conversation between the characters in their stories, but also as speaking bubbles, or thinking bubbles, in their pictures. The students will also learn how to weave in the 5W's into their writing. They will be encouraged to think about how they can write about who was there, when it happened, where the story took place, what happened and why something occurred. This is rather tricky because we do not want to ask the questions and then answer them; rather as authors we want to weave in these elements throughout the story. Ask your child to explain our "Tiny Topics Notebooks" and why we read already published stories written by my former students.
In science this week, the students on Harmony continued learning about Force and Motion though our team-wide workshops. It is wonderful to see how excited they are about science and how we can integrate engineering and creativity into this process as well.
Reminders:
- Picture re-takes will be on 10/28 at 8am at ABS. Please contact the front office for more details and paperwork.
- Our school-wide Bee Wear is available again. Please consider buying a cool-looking T-shirt or hat with our school motto. I sent out an email with order forms and information. It is also published in the School Bell. Thank you!
- It is getting colder and colder every day it feels like. We have recess every day (unless it is raining) so please make sure your child has warm, weather-appropriate clothing.
- On Tuesday, October 28th, we have our last PE as a rotating related arts. We will begin Guidance with Ms. Tatlock on November 4th. More information will follow.
- We still have PE on Wednesdays and Fridays so please remember to wear, or bring, those sneakers. We LOVE to earn those red buzzies!
Regards,
Maria
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