Stone Soup

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-We will read different versions of the book Stone Soup and contrast and compare the characters, setting, and more! On Tuesday we will make our own stone soup and enjoy it together as a class family. We will eat at 12:00 on this day in our classroom. Everyone is welcome to come but unfortunately we will only have enough food for our little pilgrims and Indians, We will dress up as pilgrims and Indians and in addition to making our own soup we will sample vegetables from our class garden and make our own butter!

Guided Reading-We will review all reading strategies taught so far and practice in our small groups.

Guided Math-We will review all our addition strategies taught so far and practice in our small groups.

Writer's Workshop- We will share our published personal narratives with our 2nd grade buddies in Mrs. Barbor's class!

Reminders
*Thanksgiving break starts Wednesday, November 23rd. Happy Thanksgiving to all the monkey families! Gobble! Gobble!

Gingerbread Man

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-
We will read different versions of the Gingerbread Man and compare and contrast them. We will also learn the literary term refrain and look for it in our books this week. On Friday we will put on a gingerbread man play and decorate gingerbread houses. All are welcome!

Daily 5 Reading-We will read lots of versions of the Gingerbread Man. We will discuss, compare and contrast, predict, chart, discuss refrains, and analyze....

Writer's Workshop-We will continue to practice writing friendly letters and using their 5 parts of date, greeting, body, closing, and name. We will write to Santa and tell him all of the mischievous things our classroom elf on the shelf Chippy has been up to!

Guided Math-We will continue to practice our addition strategies and work on fluency with our facts.

Reminders
*Our gingerbread man play is this Friday in the cafeteria at 8:00. All are welcome!
*Next Friday, December 16th is our walking school bus polar express edition. We will meet at the park on Market and begin walking at 7:15. Your child may dress in their pajamas and bring their box train! We will sing Christmas carols on the way to school!
*Tuesday, December 20th is Grinch day! Wear green!
*Wednesday, December 21st is Candy Cane day! Wear red and white! It is also a half day. Students will be dismissed at 11:00.

Reindeer

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-We will read non-fiction and fiction books on reindeer. We will learn the literary terms for such words as glossary, index, caption, etc...and practice using them. We will make reindeer shirts, hats, tails, sing songs, make reindeer food, make a reindeer snack, and much more!

Daily 5 Reading-We are having fun reindeer read aloud and learning and practicing using them by turning and talking or representing our ideas on white boards or paper.

Guided Math-We are practicing all of our addition strategies.

Writer's Workshop-We are learning how to write a friendly letter and writing Santa a letter.

Reminders
*Everyone is invited to join us next Friday at 8:00 in the cafeteria for our gingerbread man play and to build gingerbread houses with us! Please send in an apron with your child's name on it before next Friday. :)
*Everyone is invited to join us for our walking school bus polar express edition on Friday, December 16th at the park on Market. Come dressed in your jammies and with your box train! We will start walking at 7:15.

 Oh no! When we made reindeer food we accidentally left some on the playground and the reindeer came and oh no....pooped! The boys and girls were nice enough to help me clean it up with spoons and cups!

Native Americans

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-We will learn about Native Americans and life long ago. We will learn about the Wampanaug Indians who met the Pilgrims. We will make Native American outfits, learn how to make Native American symbols, make a life size teepee, a teepee snack, and more! It will be a fun week!

Daily 5 Reading-We will learn the strategy flip the sound under the goal of accuracy. The boys and girls will learn to use their knowledge of letter sounds to decode words by trying out, or flipping the different sounds a letter can make until they hear a word they recognize and that makes sense.

Guided Math-We are continuing to learn addition strategies.

Writer's Workshop- We are learning to self assess by using a check list for narrative writing. Our checklist includes: I told, drew, and wrote a whole story, I had a page that showed what happened first, I put my pages in order, I had a page that showed what happened last in my story, My story had a page for the beginning, the middle, and a page for the end, My story indicated who was there, what they did, and how the characters felt, I drew and wrote some details about whta happened, I could read my writing, I wrote a letter for the sounds I heard, I used the word wall to help me spell. Whew! We have learned a lot!

Reminders
*Chick-fil-A Spirit Night is Tuesday, November 15th from 5-8. Come have dinner with Mrs McMillan and Mrs. Hunt! Don't forget to check in with a PTO representative and let them know you are there for our class.
*Wednesday, November 16th Banks Trail Middle School students are coming to perform a play for kindergarten!
*Tuesday, November 22nd we will have our classroom Thanksgiving Feast! We will be eating in our classroom around 12:00 on this day. Everyone is welcome to come however, we will only have enough food prepared for the little pilgrims and Indians! :)
*No school November 23rd-25th. Happy Thanksgiving to all my sweet little monkeys and their sweet families! Mrs. Hunt and I are thankful for you this Thanksgiving! Gobble till you wobble!

 A HUGE thank you to Mrs. Todd for bringing us beautiful fall flowers for our garden and helping us plant!!!!!

Pilgrims and Veterans!

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-We will begin learning about the pilgrims and life long ago. We will also learn what a veteran is and celebrate Veteran's Day on Friday with by wearing red, white, and blue and having a Veteran's Day parade at 9:40 in front of the school. Everyone is invited!

Daily 5 Reading-We will focus on the strategy of trading a word/guess a word that makes sense under the goal of accuracy. When readers encounter words they don't know, but they understand the gist of the text, they insert a word that makes sense in place of the unknown word.

Writer's Workshop- We are finishing up our unit on personal narratives! This week and next we are using all we know to select and revise a piece to publish!

Guided Math-We are working hard to learn addition strategies! Please ask your child their doubles facts! This will help them with strategies such as doubles plus one and later on with doubles minus one, repeated addition, and even later on multiplication!

Reminders
*Parade at 9:40 in front of the school on Friday. Wear red, white, and blue!

Election

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-We will learn what an election is, what candidates are, and what is the presidents job. We will discuss the qualities we would like for our president to have and read the books Grace for President, Duck for President, and My Teacher for President. We will discuss the qualities of each candidate, register to vote, and cast our ballets on Monday in our class election booth. We will let you know who won our class election!

Daily 5 Reading-We are working on the goal of fluency by focusing on the strategy of rereading text. Students reread a selection of text several times until they can read it smoothly, accurately, and with expression. Children benefit from this rereading because of the ease with which it can be implemented in the classroom. Students can reread by themselves or with a partner and with any good fit books they are reading.

Guided Math-We are working on addition strategies and fluency with our addition facts.

Writer's Workshop-We are continuing to work on learning how to write personal narrative and becoming independent writers.

Reminders
*No school Tuesday, November 8th
*Chick-Fil-A Spirit Night from 5-8 on Tuesday, November 15th wear your monkey shirt to school and Chick-Fil-A!
*OPES Spirit Day is Friday, November 18th wear your OPES gear
*No school November 23rd-25th. Happy Thanksgiving!

Oviparous Animals!

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts- We will learn about oviparous animals (animals that lay eggs). We will be receiving our fertilized duck eggs this week to put in our incubator. Every day we will candle the eggs and document in our journals what is happening inside the egg. It takes 28 days for ducklings to hatch....we can't wait!!!!

Daily 5 Reading-We will focus on the reading goal of fluency by working on the strategy of using punctuation  to enhance phrasing and prosody. Clustering words together by using our knowledge of the spoken patterns in the English language and using punctuation enhances our understanding of what we read.

Writer's Workshop-We will continue to learn how to write a persuasive piece by learning how to convince people.

Daily 5 Math-We are working on our place value unit. We are practicing making numbers with rods and units, counting rods and units by tens then switching to counting by ones and identifying the number they represent, and identifying the one and tens place in numbers.

Reminders
*Wednesday is picture day. We will have our class picture taken.
*Thursday and Friday is Kindergarten Registration

Dr. Suess

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-We will celebrate the life of Dr. Suess! We will learn about him and read lots of his books! We will have special snacks and activities all week!
Monday-Dress up like your favorite Dr. Suess character!
Tuesday-Fox in Socks-Wear your craziest socks!
Wednesday-Cat in the Hat-Wear red and white!
Thursday-Thing 1 & Thing 2- Crazy hair and pj's for kindergarten
Friday-Field Trip to Discovery Place! Wear your monkey shirt!

Daily 5 Reading-We will focus on the goal of expanding our vocabulary by practicing the strategy of using prior knowledge and context to predict and confirm meaning. Context clues are the words, phrases, and sentences surrounding an unfamiliar word that give clues or hints to its meaning.

Writers Workshop-We will begin learning about persuasive writing! The boys and girls will think about problems they wished they could fix. I will explain to them that they don't have to just wish them away but they can write them away!

Daily 5 Math-We are beginning our unit on place value! The boys and girls will learn about rods and units, the ones, tens, and hundreds place, and much more!

Reminders
*Field trip Friday! Wear your monkey shirt and pack a bag lunch and drink with your child's name and mine.