First Stop: Video News

We had another fabulous week in second grade filled with reading, writing, math, science and even some social studies!

We are beginning a new unit all about immigration and family history.  Students will be learning about why people immigrate to another country, where people landed when they came to America, and much more.  Additionally, they will be learning about their own personal family history; where their ancestors came from, why they came to this country, and languages they spoke.  Stay tuned for this fabulous family project.

In science this week, Ronan brought in some fascinating flower buds, and we spent some time dissecting these cool specimens.  Students had to ask their own scientific question for the activity, and attempted to discover their own answers.  We also planted the seeds that we harvested a few weeks ago during our seed counting activity.  Pretty soon we might have an apple tree or an avocado tree.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

We enjoyed our last garden trip of the season, as we planted garlic, and protected it from the cold with straw.

During reading time, we have been learning about making text-self, text-text, and text-world connections.  Next time you read with your child, ask her if she has any connections she wants to share.

The air is crisp and the leaves are crunchy! We have been enjoying these beautiful fall days in Kindergarten!

This week, we took a walk around the neighborhood to observe trees. We discovered that most trees fall into two categories–conifers and broadleaf (or hardwood) trees. We learned that conifers have a triangular shape and have needles or scales for leaves, and are usually evergreen. Broadleaf trees are wider and more rounded, and their leaves are flat, broad, and thin.  Broadleaf trees lose their leaves when the weather turns cold. We discovered that there are more broadleaf trees in our neighborhood; however, we did find some conifers. The children even collected pine cones!

Conifer or broadleaf?

Collecting pine cones underneath a conifer

 Matching a broadleaf to its tree

 

 The children collected leaves to create their “Lorlds” ( Leaf worlds). They created “leafle” (leaf people) “lanimals” (leaf animals) “livers” (leaf rivers) and more!

 We had our election to determine what our dramatic play area will be! Each child was given a chip to place in one of the bags that represented some of the local businesses in our community including, a bakery, fire station, post office, and library. Once everyone voted, we counted the number of chips in each bag and determined that the post office received the most votes. Over the next few weeks, we will conduct research and visit a post office to help us create props for our dramatic play area, and learn how post office colleagues work together. 

As we explore the concept of negative space, the children created their tape paintings. They used masking tape to create various images including, plants, animals, and sunshine. They used watercolors to paint the space around the tape, and pulled the tape off of the paper, revealing their images. 

We played Sight Word Musical Chairs! The children danced around the chairs, stopped when the music paused, and read the sight word card that was placed on their chair. The child with the “magic word” picked the next word for the following round. We enjoyed this game and look forward to playing it again!

We enjoyed our first (two!) birthday celebrations of the year! Happy birthday Naftali and Hadas!

Each child shared something special about Naftali and Hadas, and helped them to decorate their birthday tracings.

Naftali’s mom, Marni, brought in Oobleck–an amazing substance that is both a solid and a liquid!

You can make your own Oobleck at home!

Materials:

1 cup of water

1 to 2 cups of cornstarch

Mixing bowl

Food coloring (optional)

Preparation:

1) Pour one cup of cornstarch into the mixing bowl

2) Pour the water in, mixing slowly as you go. Keep adding more water until the mixture becomes thick. Add more cornstarch if it gets too runny, and more water if it becomes too thin.

3) Add a few drops of food coloring (optional)

4) Roll up your sleeves, put your hands in, and have fun!

Thank you to Naftali’s family for supplying the ice cream sundaes and Hadas’s family for sending in the blueberries. We all enjoyed the yummy birthday treat!

November in fifth grade has felt full.  The good kind of full.  If you stop by our classroom at any given time, you’ll see students deep in thought, wrestling with big ideas connected to freedom or responsibility.  You might hear students engaged in a discussion about tolerance or individuality.  They might be reading and interacting with ideas in a text, or they might be solving complex word problems with a partner.  They might be doing peer or group critique, trying hard to complete their personal narratives.  After our sojourn into the woods, we seem to have become immersed in our unit studies.  Fifth graders have worked hard to create work that helps make sense of what we’re learning. I learn so much about my students and their thinking from their work!  It also seems this deep level of productivity has left my camera devoid of captivating photos of the children at work.  I will, however, share some of their thoughtful work:

 

 

You might be wondering how we have time to do so much, especially given our dual curriculum.  Fifth graders have noted lately how many more assignments they seem to have.  From end of book projects to unit tests to creative artistic work, figuring out how to “do it all” has been a challenge indeed.

Time management, in fact, has been an important topic of conversation (and will continue to be a big focus) in fifth grade.  In class, students have been reflecting on what they have learned about managing their time.  There are an increasing number of long-term assignments in fifth grade.  Next year, when students are at middle school they will be expected to manage their time well.

Fifth graders: Could you post a comment about one strategy that has helped you with time management?  Perhaps you want to share a challenge or a lesson you’ve recently learned (like: don’t wait until the night before it’s due to start it).

Parents & Grandparents: Could you post a comment with sage advice for these fifth graders?  Share how time management is a pertinent “real-world” skill.

School-wide, we’ve been focusing on gratitude.  I would be personally grateful to those who make a comment that might enhance the depth of our thinking about time management.  All comments are welcome and encouraged!

One helpful time-saving tool is to type faster.  Here is a link to a fun and helpful keyboarding activity.  I highly recommend fifth graders spend 30 minutes a week practicing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3c6tfr                                     Note to Parents: Many of you asked about this at our recent parent-teacher conferences

This might be screen time that parents approve!

 

 

First Stop: Video News

Another great week has passed in second grade.  If you ask the kids, I’m guessing their highlight might have been our much anticipated reading party.  Given that we are a democratic classroom, the kids voted on what kind of a party they wanted.  Turns out, they wanted PJ’s, popcorn and a movie.  Little did they know, the “movie” was going to be an episode from the original (1970’s) educational series called the “Electric Company”.  Boy was it rad!

In addition to our reading party, we did lots of great, collaborative work this week in math.  We are learning some very challenging subtraction, where you need to subtract with zeros in the middle of the top number.  Some students actually took on the role of teacher, showing their friends how to do these kinds of problems.  The results were amazing!  Who needs adult teachers anymore?
In addition to working on some tough math, we experimented with awesome plant science!  We learned about pigments in flowers, by crushing up petals and extracting the pigments using rubbing alcohol.  Also, we learned how the xylem and phloem carry water and nutrients up through a plant, through the flower-dying experiment.

We are reaching an exciting milestone in second grade, as many kids are beginning to publish their first books.  Below is one proud student sharing his small moment book with the class.  This is one of many impressive pieces of writing that your children will complete throughout the year.  Stay tuned for an informal publishing party.

Finally, we were graced, yet again, by a fabulous guest reader, who read a book about Chanukah.  We are already getting excited for latkes!  I encourage everyone, even aunts, uncles, and grandparents to come in and read to our amazing class!

By Shira Elbaum:

This week we finished our first class novel, Out of Many Waters.  I found the ending to be both sad and happy at the same time.  At the end, Isobel, the main character, does not get to see her sister again.  Isobel and her sister, Maria, had made a plan to go on different ships to escape the Inquisition.  At the end, Isobel stays with the family she found on the ship.  She does not go to Amsterdam, where she hoped to see her sister.  I think if Isobel were to go to Amsterdam without the new family, it won’t be really good because she grew to be close to them.  I wonder what Maria did after she found out that Isobel didn’t come to Amsterdam.  I’m now reading One Foot Ashore, the companion book, that tells Maria’s story.

That was the first time I read a novel in English in class (because I am visiting America for half a year, and then I am going back to Israel).

First Stop: Video News

REMINDERS FOR PARENTS

ALL SCHOOL FIELD TRIP THIS TUESDAY

PAJAMA PARTY THIS WEDNESDAY TO CELEBRATE REACHING OUR READING MINUTES GOAL!

Book Review by Ruby

We’re reading the book Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald.  Mrs. Piggle Wiggle just got a call because she is very good at teaching children how to like washing dishes and making beads and doing others tuff –Ruby

 KidBlog by Veola

I like math centers and writers workshop.

News From Mrs. Guttin

We have had yet another great week rich with learning, making, and exploring.  We have spent lots of time this week on revising, editing, and publishing our “Small Moment” stories.  Students have been working meticulously to publish their very best work.  You will either get to enjoy a preview of their book or the actual thing at parent teacher conferences!

  

Alongside our writing, we have been reading up a storm.  Students are settling in to our classroom, specifically our reading center time.  On various days they participate in guided reading, word work games, computer reading games, find-out-about non-fiction center, independent reading, and partner reading.  If you ask me, I think their favorite center is “Independent Reading”.

We did some great hands-on learning and exploring with plants this week.  During our science time, we explored different kinds of seeds from various fruits and vegetables.  Students took out the seeds, drew the shape, and counted them.  Later on they will graph the amounts of seeds on a bar graph so that they can clearly see the different between seed amounts.

We also got to go to the garden and harvest the last of the basil that we picked last year.  Sophie even discovered the seeds inside the basil flower!  Now, we will attempt to dry them and sprout them once again.  Once we harvested the basil carefully, we made pesto!  Yum!  Our room smelled heavenly.  Thanks Mrs. Woods for helping us make delicious food from our garden!

 

 

 

Can you guess who are they?

 

 

 

RETHINK your P’solet (waste)….. at the end of every meal.  We weighed our p’solet, and this is how it looks – Kama Psolet?

Here is a peek to the ruach of Teva Decomposition

It is good to be home:)

We’ve had a very busy week in Kindergarten!

In math, we played two new games: Grab and Count and Roll and Record.  These games help the children develop strategies for accurately counting and keeping track of quantities up to twelve. By “grabbing” handfuls of Unifex Cubes out of paper bags, the students decided how they wanted to represent the quantities using pictures, numbers, etc. By rolling dot cubes, the children developed visual images for quantities up to six, while connecting number words, numerals and quantities, and recording numerals to represent the quantities.

 This week, we talked about how people in communities cooperate. The children reflected upon their home and school communities, and then illustrated pictures depicting the ways in which they cooperate with others. We learned that many friends help their home community by setting the table, cleaning the dishes, playing with younger siblings, etc. At school, friends work together to keep the classroom clean, show kavod, help our friends and teachers, share toys and materials, and have fun!

We read Miss Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip and learned some new “Amazing” vocabulary words!

Park

Library

Post Office

Bakery

Fire Station

Chaperone

 In this story, the children, chaperones, and the teacher cooperated with one another as they explored various places on their field trip including the park, bakery, post office, fire station, and library. Afterwards, the children thought about places in our community they would like to explore on a learning expedition. They drew pictures depicting their ideas, and we will be taking a vote to discover where our class will be going. Additionally, we will be turning our dramatic play area into this (as of now) mystery place! The children will create all of our props in the Design Lab!

It’s quite Fitting that this blog post is going out on Friday morning, as we have been exploring the letter F! The children created the letter F alphabet card and practiced Forming the letter with pipe cleaners. We will be using the visual of a fire pole to help us learn how to write a lowercase f. We will even practice sliding down the fire pole on the playground! Fantastic fun!

 

 

“Cool Pants” prevent ticks on the trail

Feeling proud of the hiking accomplishments!

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