We've had only four days together so far in Room 204, but the students managed to get a lot done!
The students worked in groups to generate the rules we follow to be safe at school. In the hallways, in the classroom, with specialty teachers and on the playground we need rules for everyone to do their best and be safe. The groups made posters with this information and these are now on display outside of the classroom.
In math, the children began to review and practice skip counting, place value and the use of ten frames. One strategy for counting a large number of objects is making groups of ten. We can skip count by ten and ones and use this information to get the answer. For example, four groups of ten and three ones means "43" NOT "34". The class learned the mnemonic "The value of the digit depends on the place that you put it." This is a reminder of how powerful our base ten number system is, because we can make ANY number in the whole universe with only ten digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9).
In writing, the children reviewed the parts of a perfect sentence. Most importantly, that every sentence has a capital letter at the beginning and a period (or "!" or "?") at the end. In their writing journals, children printed the 26 capital letters of the alphabet and noticed that these letters are all the same size. After printing all 26 lowercase letters of the alphabet, we noticed that 7 letters are tall letters (b, d, f, h, k, l, t), 5 letters go below the writing line (g, j, p, q, y) and 14 letters are in the middle (a, c, e, i, m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w, x, z). With only 26 letters, we can make any word in the English language!
Each student had a short writing conference with me to talk about the things they need to remember when writing. We talked about the writing process (plan, rough copy, edit, revise and publish) and how to use their dictionaries. Will will be talking about the writing process and using dictionaries much more in the coming weeks.
The students wrote about things they did over the summer holiday (non-fiction) and used their imaginations to write about things they did not do (fiction). The children also started to write fiction stories based on the art they painted earlier in the week.
In art, the children each planned and painted a picture that had a clear setting and characters. Then the students used their paintings as planners for their first fiction story of the year.
The students learned how to draw "chunky" or thick capital letters. Then each child created one or more chunky letters, drew patterns on the letter, cut it out and taped it to blue paper. Together we created the message "Welcome back everyone from Room 204". This message is now on the wall of the hallway outside of our classroom.
Books read aloud this week:
The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
The Book That Eats People by John Perry
Do Not Open This Book by Michael Muntean
What? Cried Granny by Kate Lum
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