Weather (Week 1)

Poem: The Hokey Pokey
Sight Words: out, your

Reading:
Comprehension Strategy: This week we discussed how characters change within a story. We read many different stories and discussed how and why they changed from the start of the book to the end. We started the week by reading "The Rain Came Down". In this story the characters were angry and irritable because it was raining and ruining things about their day. By the end of the story the sun came out and the characters were happy. We also read "The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig". This is a class favorite since it is a fractured fairy tale. In this story the Pig was big and bad and wanted to harm the little wolves, however by the end of the story, the Pig was kind and a friend of the wolves.

Accuracy: This week our word families were -ice and -ide. We made our lists, wrote the words we saw on the google slides, and did a FlipGrid with our ipad partner!

Vocabulary: This week we read such a funny story called "Storm is Coming". In this story the farmer tries to get the animals to a safe place because a storm is coming, but the animals think that Storm is a person. We learned words like huddle, nodded, guard, pasture, and stampede.

iPads: This week students used a new app called Telestory. This app allows students to play the role of a weather forecaster. They have weather cards that they pull out of a bag that guides them to know what weather they are to report.

Writing: This week during Writer's Workshop we started the week off with our pretest writing assessment for our Opinion unit. Then we learned what an opinion was. We watched the OREO persuasion video that explains our model for writing and then we played a game of Would You Rather? This allows students to share their opinion and give a reason as to why they feel that way. Students answered questions like: Would you rather be Ana or Elsa? Would you rather build a snowman or sandcastle? Would you rather ice skate or ride a bike? We also made a list of things we liked to help spark ideas of things we could write about. Then we began our writing process by using the planning page to write an opinion about whether or not I should bring the class oreos. They gave me their opinion, a reason and an example that supported their reason. Then I modeled how to take the planning page and create the final page that would be turned in.

Math: This week we are learning about ways to make 10. This is a skill that students learn where the answer is always 10, but there is a missing addend. Students will see addition sentences that look like this: 4 + _ = 10. Then they use their math tools to find the missing addend.

We started the week off by coloring a rainbow that would be our tool for later in the week. Students use the rainbow to see the 2 numbers that are associated with a color. Then we completed addition sentences to show ways to make 10. Students also learned a new math with someone game that allows them to practice understanding/recalling ways to make 10. We call this game Bears in a Cave. One partner closes his/her eyes while the other hides bears under a cup. When they are ready they tell the other to open their eyes. The partner has to look and count how many bears are in the first circle and determine how many bears are hidden in the "cave".

Vocabulary: This week students learned about the word sum. Sum is the number you get when you add 2 numbers together.

iPads: This week for ipads students used the app Find the Sums. This app allows students to choose 2 numbers that make 10. When students click a number (6 for example) they have to hit the other number that makes 10 (4). Each time a number is clicked it is shown in the tens frame on the top of the screen to help kids see the number and count the missing boxes to determine the other addend. Students loved working on this skill to see their accuracy and time at the end. I encouraged students to get 100% accuracy meaning that they never pressed the wrong number AND to get faster each time! They accepted my challenge and continued getting better each day!

Content: This week was our first week of our Weather Unit. We started by learning about weather and listing weather words. Then we made a flip book illustrating different weather words including sunny, windy, and rainy. Then when students flip the paper up they would draw the effect. Students had to think about what would happen in those weather conditions. Then we created our own illustration based off the story "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". Students used their pictures and construction paper to create food of their choice that would fall from the sky.

SEL (Social Emotional Learning): Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

Our focus this week was fairness. We spent time learning that not everything that is fair is equal. This is a hard concept for people to understand so we started by reading the story "It's Not Fair!" and discussing different things in the world around us that we might not think is fair. Things from the story include not getting to have a pet giraffe, not getting new shoes, not having packed lunch from home, etc. Then we listened to the story "Fair is Fair". In this story 3 animals at the zoo get different portions of food. But they didn't like that elephant got the most. So they split their portions to be equal. When they did that Elephant was starved and got skinny, hare got too much and was full and wasted a lot and giraffe had too much too. Later in the week we sorted different scenarios into fair and equal and talked a lot about each one. 

Then we finished the week by doing a lesson with band-aids. This lesson from Sunny Days in Second Grade helps students understand the difference in what others need. I start the lesson by having students think about a time they were hurt. Then I have them close their eyes and imagine they are hurt right now. I call them up one at a time and ask them where they hurt. For every student I put the band-aid in the same place. After everyone gets a band-aid I leave one student without a band-aid. We talk about how I put the band-aid in the same place for everyone even though that's not where everyone hurt. And then I ran out of band-aids and didn't have one for one of our friends. We make the connection of this is how things are at school. If someone needs extra help in math do we all need extra help in math? We talked about the friend that didn't get a band-aid and then said that was similar to when I am working with someone and the small group is interrupted and we don't get to learn together. 

NEXT WEEK:
Reading: Students will...
-learn words in the -ea and -ee word families.
-discuss problem and solution.

Writing: Students will...
-learn about plurals.
-begin writing opinion writings.

Math: Students will...
-learn about number bonds.
-continue learning about ways to make 10.

Content: Students will continue learning about weather and complete a STEM activity that is related to wind. 

Fairy Tales

Poem: Castle
Sight Words: get, of

Reading:
Comprehension Strategy: This week our focus strategy was cause and effect. When learning about cause and effect we first practiced with understanding of the basic skill. We used different scenarios on cards to determine the effect of a certain cause. Then we used pic collage to match the cause with the appropriate effect. An example of a cause would be it rained a lot, so the effect would be the streets are flooded. In the story, The Three Little Pigs the cause would be that the little pig built a house of straw and was not very sturdy, so the effect is that it fell over when the wolf blew on it. Throughout the week we then recalled the cause and effect within other fairy tale stories.

                                                    
Accuracy: This week we learned words that belong to the -ame and -ale word families. We watched our videos, made our lists, wrote the slide, and did another FlipGrid with our partners.

Vocabulary: This week we read the fable "The Little Red Hen". In this story students learn about the importance of helping others in order to partake in the end reward. The words that were added to our chart were fable, admired, delicious, delight, doubt, and sigh. Later in the week we did a vocabulary review by connecting the word to the emoji face that described that word.

iPads: For ipads this week students were given the opportunity to create their own fairy tale using the Princess Fairy Tale Maker app by Duck Duck Moose. Students were encouraged to use elements of a fairy tale including having an evil character, good characters, a magical component, and a problem that is solved. Take a look at some of their creations!

Students also used picEDU again to create words and pictures of their word families from last week (ake and ale). Students are becoming very fluent and successful in using the search tool within the app to find pictures to match their words in each word family.

Writing: This week students worked on their post test assessments for their informational writing unit. This is the time that students get to showcase what they know and how well they can write. We finished the week writing a class fairy tale. Students illustrated parts of the story on their own.

Math: This week during math students learned about graphs. Throughout the week we practiced reading graphs and getting information from the graphs as well as filling in information on a graoh. We started the week by filling out a graph that showed our favorite zoo animals. Then we made a picture graph showing our favorite fairy tale characters. Later in the week students went and asked their classmates if they would rather have Goldilocks sleep in their bed or eat their porridge. They used their classmates answers to record on their graph. They we shared our findings.

Vocabulary: Our vocabulary words this week were rows and columns. These words help us better understand graphs. A row is a straight line that goes left and right. A column is a straight line going up and down.

iPads: This week students used a dice with 2D shapes that they rolled. After rolling they recorded the shape they rolled on a graph in the app Doodle Buddy. They practiced recording their answers 2 different ways; with a bar graph using colors to record their answer and a picture graph where they drew each shape that they rolled.

Content: This week we learned about Fairy Tales. We started our week by examining the elements of a Fairy Tale. We used a chart to review the different things that an element has within it. Then we did an activity with Jack and the Beanstalk. The Giant left us a letter wanting us to measure items around the room with his GIANT feet. With our ipad partners we used his foot to measure and take pictures of things that were bigger, smaller, and the same size as his foot. We then retold the story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears with a craftivity allowing us to draw the beginning, middle, and end of the story. On Thursday we did a STEM activity with a partner using candy DOTS and toothpicks as they built a house for their little pig. It had to have 4 sides and a roof and had to withstand the Big Bad Wolf! We had many successful houses!

Fairy Tale Ball: Every year we have so much fun dressing up as our favorite fairy tale character, princesses, princes, and super heros. On Friday we go down with our dance partner and learn how to curtsy and bow and do different dances with fairy tale music. We end the ball with a parade around the school for everyone to see us all dressed up. After the parade we end with coming back to the classroom and have cookies and juice! We always have a BALL!

SEL (Social Emotional Learning): Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

This week we learned about compassion. Compassion is when we are kind and help to make someone feel better when they feel sad or unhappy. We stared the week by reading "Rude Cakes" and talked about how when we show compassion we are kind to others. Then we listened to Howard B. Wigglebottom and learned how he showed compassion for a friend when he wanted to fix her problem, but wasn't able to. On Wednesday we looked at a picture sequence of 2 turtles and talked about how the turtles interacted with each other and how the one showed compassion. On Thursday we talked about 2 scenarios when 2 different people were not feeling happy. We discussed ways we could show compassion towards them and make them feel better. 

NEXT WEEK:
Reading: Students will...
-learn words in the -ide and -ice word families.
-discuss how characters change in the story.

Writing: Students will...
-learn about opinion writing.
-do pre-writing assessment. 

Math: Students will...
-learn about ways to make 10.

Content: Students will learn about weather. This is the first week of our 2 week unit about weather.