Our first week back and a lot happened, from a random fire drill Tuesday morning to preparing for the Science Fair. One of the things we will be learning about this week are penguins. Kids LOVE penguins and really what's not to love. They waddle and slide on ice and swim like a fish in water. Plus they have the added advantage of looking cute as baby chicks!
Every morning we start the day of with a Chit-Chat Message about penguins. These were created by Deanna Jump. It is a great way to introduce reading for information and the text features associated with informational texts.
Our literary focus was on author Ezra Jack Keats. We read The Snowy Day together and students visualized what the snowman and snow angel would look like.
We then reread the story the next day and sequenced the story events together. The students then recreated the sequence independently.
The last day the students decided what type of weather they preferred and created a picture and wrote about it. After reading The Snowy Day most students decided they liked winter more. Even though it doesn't snow here!
Keeping our winter and penguin theme going through poetry was fun. Students read the poem and circled all of the high frequency words that we have been learning in yellow. Then they found all the Secret Stories and underlined them in green. They then did this independently with a little reader that they get to keep.
Tuesday also happened to be the 80th day of school. That means Zero the Hero stopped by and the students created a Zero the Hero poster for the 80th day of school. They always look so cute!
During math the students worked to solve different word problems. We read the word problem together, discuss any words that the students might not understand, and then they solve the problem independently. I choose a student to then share with the class how they solved the problem.
Let's not forget that New Year's Day was just last week. So, we read Squirrels New Year's Resolution and brainstormed resolution ideas of our own. The students then wrote down their resolutions.
We also got a new class visitor. It's a corn snake. It will only be in the class for 2 weeks.