Mar. 26th-Apr 6th

Feb. 19th-Mar. 23rd

What's Next?

-Word Study: reading words with au, aw and ow, ou

-Reading: Assessing nonfiction text features. Comparing and contrasting the adventures and experiences of characters in a story.

-Writing: Informational books. Learners will start to research a topic and then write about that topic providing facts. You can help by starting a conversation about what they are interested in or curious about.

-Math: Measuring objects with nonstandard unit (paperclips, blocks...)

-Science and Social Studies: We will begin a study on Light bulbs and the important people who contributed! This is an application of what I learned from my two day training on the Creative Curriculum. I am excited to get started! Stay tuned for how you can help with our study!

C1 Book Madness

Governor Kay Ivey came to our school Monday to help kick off our Book Madness tournament of books! We have enjoyed reading some of the matches this week. We can't wait to see which books will move to the Elite 8! Be sure to ask your learner all about Book Madness and some of the books that we have been reading.

Thank you so much for those of you who purchased these titles for our classroom! These books become class favorites and remain out the entire year. Thank you for helping us to instill a love of books and reading in our kids!

Diamante Poems

In our efforts to explore the use of nouns, adjectives and verbs, we have created Diamante Poems. These are poems about opposites with the following format:

• Line one (noun- first object)
• Line two (two adjectives- about first object)
• Line three (three verbs- about first object)
• Line four (two nouns- about first object, two nouns about 2nd object)
• Line five (three verbs- about second object)
• Line six (two adjectives- about second object)
• Line seven (noun- second object)

We are working on publishing these poems. Look for them in Seesaw this week. Ask your learner about their Diamante Poem. Here are a few published ones:

January

Number Talks

We have really been diving into 2D and 3D shapes. We learned their attributes and discovered ways to draw and compose them to create new shapes. We also discussed where we see these shapes out in the world.

We will be working on solving story problems that involve addition and subtraction as well as fact fluency.

What's Next?

-"How-to" books: You can help at home by discussing with your child things they might know how to do really well and can write the steps to. (Ex: how to make a PB&J, How to play UNO...)

-Retelling and finding the central message or lesson in a story.

-Fiction vs nonfiction. Learners can explain why a book is fiction or nonfiction.

-Reading words with final-E and inflectional endings (rake, ice, gate... and words ending in -ing, ed, s...

-Determining if an equation is true or false (ex: 9+9=15+2 This is False). Strategies for addition and subtraction.

PUBLISHING CELEBRATION!

Hopefully, you have been able to take a minute and read some of our personal narratives! If not, click the padlet below to take a look and leave a comment!

What's next?

We will begin reassessing standards and DIBELS assessments after the break. This assessment will measure their Oral Reading Fluency (Think: how many correct words per minute) and nonsense word fluency. Click below for extra practice with nonsense word fluency. Please remember to check Chalkable for updates/additions to your child's progress and please let me know if you have any questions.

Coming up....

We will be reviewing and assessing the following skills over the next two weeks. Please remember we are flexible and will adjust skills/timing if needed.

Math: MENTALLY finding 10 more, 10 less, 1 more and 1 less of a number. Understand the meaning of the equal sign and determine if equations are true or false.

Reading: Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details as well as finding their central message.

Reading Foundational: Distinguish long from short vowel sounds in spoken single-syllable words.

Language: Apply alphabetical order to the first letter of words to access information

Writing: Finishing up our personal narratives and moving into creative writing with narratives.

Science: Connections of patterns of the sun and sky with light and shadows. We will also be planting our corn seeds that have been germinating in our window!

Project/interests: Continuing our research on structures! If you have any connections with builders, architects, engineers, etc. please let us know!

October 9th-October 20th

Dream Field Farms Field Trip

We are looking forward to our first field trip of the year on Thursday Oct. 26th to Dream Field Farms! It will be a fun day of exploring and learning together. This is a very well organized field trip and I am excited about all of the parents that have signed up to meet us there. If you are chaperoning our field trip PLEASE CLICK HERE to read important information such as times, meeting areas and driving instructions. There is a signup below for a few items that will make our field trip run even smoother. Please click the link below if you are able to help out with one of these items. We greatly appreciate it.

A few reminders:

• If you are chaperoning, PLEASE CLICK HERE
• Please dress your learner in the red Pike Road Field Trip shirt (or any red shirt) with comfortable clothes and shoes for the weather. Please keep in mind that Mrs. Granger and our chaperones will not be responsible for jackets. :)
• We are leaving at 8:15 sharp so please make sure your learner is on time and has had breakfast.
• If you checked that your learner will be bringing a lunch from home please use all disposable packaging in a large zip lock bag labeled with your learner's name and my name. No lunch boxes please.

Our First Expert Speaker

Mr. Francis from Caddell Construction was our first expert speaker on the science of Architecture. We created questions for him and he did an amazing job answering and showing us some of the tools he uses in his job. Here is a wish list of items that we would love to continue to explore with in our classroom. Thank you for your support in our interests.

Shadow Art: A Study of Light and Shadow

We took our love of building outdoors this week to explore light and shadow. We rolled out some butcher paper and built structures. We discussed how the shadow was created. The shadows were traced and then we painted them to create shadow art. The kids also created videos of other shadows around the school. We have connected those to QR codes and displayed them along with our art. We will be continuing our exploration of light and shadow and will be introduced and encouraged to use new vocabulary words like: Transparent, translucent, and opaque. Be sure to ask your learner all about shadows and have a discussion on how they are created. Can you find any shadows around your house or neighborhood?

Weekly Highlights from our Seesaw Blog

We have connected with two other classrooms around the country using our Seesaw blog. We will begin giving others feedback on their thinking and learning as they give us feedback on ours. For now, we have been learning how to give feedback to each other on Feedback Fridays. Be sure to ask your learner about Feedback Friday.

September 25th-October 6th

THANK YOU!

Thank you for taking the time to meet with me for conferences. I appreciate all of the kind words, donations to our classroom and thoughtful treats and gifts. It makes me want to work harder for your child. Thank you for taking an active role in the education of your child. If you were unable to meet with me and you would like to, please reach out to me through email and we can schedule a time. My door is always open!

Seesaw: Our Digital Journal

I hope that you have enjoyed seeing your child's learning, thinking and creating as much as I have through their digital portfolio or Journal, as they are referred to in our classroom. Please take a look below at our class Seesaw Blog. We welcome comments on our work as we are learning how to receive and give feedback to take our work to the next level.

When leaving comments to your child or to others, please follow the THINK guidelines that we will be using in our classroom:

T: Is it Thoughtful? Is your comment specific?

H: Is it Helpful? Could your comment increase the quality of work shown?

I: Is it inspiring? Will your comment lead to new ideas or learning?

N: Is it Necessary? Is your comment needed?

K: Is it Kind? Does your comment demonstrate kindness?

All About Structures!

This past week we spent time creating different types of structures using materials found in our room. We also took a trip to the playground and took pictures of parts of the structure and discussed their purpose and function. Mrs. Hernandez's (C1 Lead Learner) husband is an architect with Caddell Construction so we wrote him emails this past week asking for him to come and be our first expert speaker about the design process of buildings. He will be coming Thursday morning and we are very excited to hear what he has to say. Take a look at some of our structures and our emails that were sent to Mr. Francis with Caddell.

Sign up to be a Mystery Reader!

Click the link below to sign up to be a Mystery Reader in our classroom! If you can not find a day that works for your schedule, please let me know and we can work something out.

Getting Ahead in Math

We will begin to discuss and work on the following math skills all year. These are basic early skills that our kids needs to have a strong base in. Click the links to be taken to helpful resources that can be done at home.

-Addition and Subtraction Fluency: Try Math Fast Fact App Marble Math Addition Balloon Pop Subtraction Math Facts Basketball

-Place Value: Base Ten Bingo Game

-Comparing Number Values

All of these practice games can be found on ABCYa.com. There are also literacy games as well.

International Dot Day

We joined a global community of creators and made our own mark after reading the inspirational book, The Dot by Peter Reynolds. It's about a little girl named Vashti who, with encouragement from her teacher, realizes that creativity can start with just one mark or dot! You can see these beautiful creations outside our door when you come for conferences!

August 21-25

Another great week for us in C1! Thank you for coming to Curriculum Night Thursday. If you were unable to make it, I sent home the handouts in Patriot Folders. I will have most of those documents in the "Resources" page of this site soon. As discussed Thursday night, I am in the process of assessing kids and seeing where they are and what they need. I will communicate this to you as soon as possible and let you know what you can do at home to help your child. Thank you for your commitment to your child's education!

Eclipsin'

Monday's eclipse was amazing! The kids and I both thought that it was really cool! I enjoyed listening to their comments and it was an awesome feeling to see a sea of kids and adults gathered together to observe this rare event of nature. What a beautiful and wondrous world we live in!

We pretended to be astronomers for the day and recorded our observations in our STEAM (Science, Engineering, Art, and Math) Journal. Make sure to ask your learner what they observed. I wish that I had more pictures but I was so in awe myself. The kids even got to meet Mr. Clint because he said he could not miss out on the viewing party! :)

Writer's Workshop

We are still using this time to write about all of our friends. Some are sharing stories while others are just telling a little bit about themselves. This week we heard from Ben, Dave, Davis and Grace. Once we ask a few questions, learners get their journals and find a quiet spot around the room to write. When they feel like they are finished with their writing they come to me to conference. This is when I get to have a one-on-one conversation about their writing and help them establish goals.

Quiet Time

I see a lot of drawings and notes going home in backpacks and your child might have mentioned that they made it during Quiet Time. You can think of this as "downtime." We all need breaks during the day and this is a 10 minute part of our day that we are reading, writing, drawing or resting. It is usually after recess or lunch and it is a great way to get the second half of our day off to a great start. Ask your learner what they like to do during Quiet Time and what makes them choose that over the other options.

What to expect the first few weeks of school

The first few weeks of school are all about building community and having routines and procedures in place. We will take several days getting to know each other. I have plans to take our learners through the process of a project by creating rules and expectations for our learning space.

I am going to work hard to make sure your child knows what they need to academically, but my number one focus is on making sure your child feels safe, comfortable and loved. It's all about building lasting and memorable relationships. The rest is just the cherry on top!

REMINDER: We have snack daily so please remember to pack a healthy snack clearly labeled for your child. I used my last few emergency snacks last week so if anyone has some extra pre-packaged snacks they would like to donate we would greatly appreciate it.