Reading Comprehension

I mentioned earlier that we have been reading books in the Henry and Mudges series and the Annie and Snowball series by Cynthia Rylant. I shared our problem/solution/lesson chart and today I wanted to show you charts that show more of our thinking. One chart below shows how we learn about a character over time as we read more books in a series. This helps us understand each book in the series more deeply and is one of the reasons why reading a series of books is so good for younger readers. The other charts show our thoughts in our discussions about how characters have different perspectives about the same events - in this case going camping and building a castle out of a cardboard box. We really love these books and the characters from them.

Dance Video

I thought you might like to see a video of the crew dancing in Performing Arts the day after they did their play. Thanks, Ms. Meghan, for capturing this. If you get this post by email you will need to click through to see the video.

Our mid-week library visit time is tomorrow. Please help your child return any books that they have finished.

Using What We Learned from the 6th Graders

Remember back in October when the crew went and visited the Cardboard Carnival created by Ms. Brittany's  and Ms. Kim's crews? If not, check out our photo album from our visit:

Cardboard Carnival

We had such a great time that day and the crew was so inspired. Well, those ideas have been percolating in the minds of our crew and they emerged this week in our Build and Create Station. We have had these Build and Create items around for a long time but just this week, the crew began to create their own games with the cardboard and other items. We invited Ms. Brittany's crew down to see what we created and shared some of our blog posts with them. Check out the photos and videos below to see for yourselves what some of the crew created.

 

Important Dates
2/17 No school for students - Professional Development Day
2/20 No school - President's Day
2/23 Winter Voyage for 1st grade - one day only, not an overnight trip, no day of rest needed
3/20 - 4/3 Spring Break

The Power of Yet

I love the ideas in the video below. It talks about how we all need to know that we can learn and grow and that we aren't stuck with the skills that we currently have. It is something that I try hard to teach our crew everyday. (If you get this post by email, you will need to go directly to the crew blog to view the videos.)

Library - We have library tomorrow. Please help your child return his or her books.


And here is the Sesame Street version of those same ideas:

Functions in Math

This week we began to learn a little bit about functions in math. We took a look at some strings of numbers and tried to decide what was happening to each number in the string to get the next number. Sometimes we know the "rule" and sometimes we have to figure out the "rule". The problems we are working on look like this - ask your child to tell you all about it:

In	Out
4	14
50	60
22	32
55	65

Arts and PE Class
Our Arts and PE class next week is PE.

The Empty Pot

We have been rehearsing a Chinese folktale play in Performing Arts with Ms. Chelsea. Today was show time! We were nervous but we did a great job! Thanks for coming to be our audience. Thanks to Ms. Chelsea for putting this together. Great job!

My favorite part of the day was hearing about how the crew cheered when Calvin arrived late in the day - just in time for the last rehearsal. (His mom broke her foot.) The crew really didn't want him to miss it. We are crew!

Even though I am no longer a rookie, I made a rookie mistake today. I forgot to clear the storage on my phone so I ran out of space in the middle of filming. Oops! Thankfully every child had a family member present so this isn't such a big issue. Sorry about that. Below is what I did manage to capture before I ran out of space.

Library
We have library tomorrow. Please help your child remember to return his or her library books.

This and That

Tyler's dad brought back some gifts for us from his recent trip to China. He brought back a poster that has Chinese characters on it for various words. If you push the button, it will say the word in Chinese. He also brought back some writing books that kids in China actually use in school. We were very interested is seeing these. Thanks, Tyler and family. (Click through to the actual post to see the videos below if you get this post by email.)

We are all teachers. We are all learners. Connor taught all of us a new way to tie shoes. So cool! Thanks, Connor!



 Another photo showing that it takes a village to teach our children. We are so lucky to have such great classroom volunteers this year.

Check out the words Kalyn and Connor made with Ms. Kristy.