February 5, 2020

Hello Families,

Thanks to everyone who has returned report card envelopes and Leighton Art Center field trip forms. :) We are currently still looking for at least one more adult to join us on the field trip, two would be even better!  Please let me know if you can join us for the day, it's a beautiful place!

Things are going well here at school and students are building a lot of independence in the work perios routines. Currently, we are learning about how to write "high quality sentences" and move away from the boooooring sentences like, "It was fun." "I went swimming." "It was awesome." "It was good." Last week we talked about how high quality sentences make sense on their own and include ideas from who, what, when, where, why and descriptive words! We created this example as a class and watched it evolve and become more "high quality" through multiple revisions. Our goal is to have each student be able to write one high quality sentence so they can work towards varying sentence lengths etc.

We also underlined one sentence in our own writing that we thought was high quality and as a class sorted examples and non-examples. From this, we determined that writing high quality sentences is tricky stuff. Our next goal will be to revise previous sentences to make them better and then re-sort.

Some kiddos are working on writing familiar personal narratives using all lowercase letters (where appropriate) and others are working on constructing high quality sentences about small moments from their own experiences.

Today we learned a new math game for making 10's. I will post the instructions in a seperate blog. We also continue to learn different ways to represent understanding of mathematical concepts and solve puzzles! Here are some examples:

These puzzles are really tricky for the kids! Especially when they have more than 2 addends  :)

We are still learning about worms and this week we talked about the lifecycle of a worm, and started to learn about what earthworms can eat. We sorted pictures based on our learning thus far and then changed items around as we learned more. So far we know that earthworms like fruits and vegetables so long as they are not too acidic (ie. lemons, limes, oranges).

Notice the use of sequencing words :)

Here are some other pictures of ongoing work:

There are really cool animals in this book! We read about a new one or two every day. 

This is called the Lesser Fairy Armadillo... Test your kid: Ask them if they can remember what it eats and where it lives, they can also use their bums for something funny... 

Valentine's Day
I've had a few students ask about Valentines Day since it runs over teachers convention this year. For the students who would like to bring Valentines cards from home, we will hand them out on February 12 in the afternoon. To make delivery easier (especially for the kiddos who are learning to read) it is easier to addess each Valentine "Dear Friend" instead of individual names. Please note we have 22 students in our class. Handing out Valentines cards is a choice :).

Important Dates:

February 12: Family Dance at LBS
February 12: Literacy Day at LBS
February 12: Valentines Day celebrations
February 13: No School
February 14: No School
February 17: Family Day - no school
February 18: Leighton Art Field Trip
February 28: No School



Take care all! :)

Lindsay Brown