Our first full week has come to a close. Students brought home writer's notebooks in order to personalize them and we've taken the big leap into the world of writing! In our writer's notebooks we collect ideas, try out different types of writing entries, and some of us are using them for first drafts. Other writers in our class may elect to write their first drafts on their laptops and we revise and edit on printouts of their work. Still others prefer to move to white lined paper as they draft. We are learning to search for the best tools that fit our individual learning style.
In math, we are using Symphony Math software in class and at home as a learning tool. This mathematics program helps us bridge from our use of manipulatives to the abstract by utilizing pictures and reviewing concepts until mastery is achieved. We worked with attribute blocks, have learned the game of PIG, which reviews addition, and have completed a mathematics inventory that shows which concepts students have mastered and which ones need teaching. Soon we will be working with place value.
Our blog is a community newsletter. Students are enthusiastically working on pieces they hope to post soon. To post on the blog, students must have moved a writing piece through the whole writing process: brainstorming/planning, first draft, revision of content, editing, and publishing. We've discussed the importance of planning and brainstorming in the writing process and we are organizing our thoughts before working on first drafts. We are framing our thoughts as we write to help us be aware of writing in complete sentences and to pay attention to punctuation.
We created two word poems this week and you can read your child's in their writer's notebook. The students elected not to share their poetry on the blog, however we did create a classroom book where students will put published pieces of work. Readers of the book will leave a sticky note on the writing pieces to give positive feedback to the author. As we add to our book please take a chance to read it when you visit our classroom. We love to hear kind words about our writing!
Matthew Arruda created a Powerpoint presentation for "Talk Like a Pirate Day", which is Saturday, September 19th. He presented this at morning meeting and there was a lot of WOW factor to it. We will convert this to a movie and add it to our blog with Mrs. Donahue's help! She will do the same with Emma Walsh's weather forecast, also created on Powerpoint. AJ Jarabek is working on a piece about the origins of basketball, Sam Barlow created our joke post, Nathaniel Vargas will post a graph of favorite afterschool activities, and Cody recently changed topics, but has begun a list of possible pieces.
It is my goal to be in touch with all families by the end of next week. I want to see how your child is settling in, answer any questions you may have, and receive feedback on your end of how things seem to be going.
I wish you all a wonderful weekend. My family is off to Maine with dog. It could be an interesting car ride!
Laura Velazquez
P.S. I will do my best to edit all writing you read on this blog. Much of it is student generated and if a typo or error escapes me, feel free to let me know so we can fix it.
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