October 3-6, 2022

It was such a busy week that Mrs. Cooper didn’t even have time to get student input into our blog. We had school pictures, time with our buddies, lots of math learning, word exploration, poetry writing, two walking field trips….and so much more! Be sure to ask us about the best part of our week.

In writing, we did a free write where we could each decide what we wanted to write about, while being sure to focus writing in complete sentences and also adding detail so our writing wasn’t boring. We also wrote about the setting in our book so that next week we can make our props and other details for our novel set. When we did this, it was important to reflect on what details we heard in the book and how we could communicate them in clear ways.  Some of our favorite writing however was from our walking field trips. We watched the leaves fall to the ground and brainstormed the many words we could use to describe them. Some of the words we came up with were: dancing, gliding, floating, twirling, swirling, floppy, and diving. We then used those words to create a poem that included a simile and imagery about fall leaves descending to the ground. Here are just two of the poems from our class:

I see a leaf, green and yellow
It does not fall like a stone in the water
Nor does it float in place like a star in the sky
It slowly, elegantly falls – twirls, spinning.
And when it swirls and spins like a pirouetting ballerina ready to fly
It makes me feel calm and content.

-S.J.

 I see you little leaf

You fall like a soft raindrop.
It makes me feel happy and peaceful
Like a deer with family.
-D.R.

 I see a leaf, yellow with a tint of brown.

Falling like a twirling ballerina,
Running like an athlete,
Running like a cheetah.
I feel calm and happy,
And a bit emotional.
-F.T.

On our first community walk of the week, we also encountered some signs on three trees in a park. Ask us about what we inferred and then read. We can explain why these trees are being cut down.

 

Also in Literacy, we read an article about Crows. We used this article to compare fiction and non-fiction texts. We looked at non-fiction text features like titles, headings, pictures and captions and how they can help us understand what we read. Additionally, our fiction novel Wishtree has a crow named Bongo. We are guessing that the author did some research before writing the book because some of the characteristics of Bongo are true of real crows. Did you know crows:

• have so many different calls – K.J.
• are songbirds – E.M.
• can use tools to make a –E.Y.
• understand water displacement – S.A. (ask us what water displacement is!!!)

     These are all the other things we learned from our article:

Of course, we did so much more!! Too much to fit into one blog post. Ask us about:

• our math “Place Value Passports” and how we are feeling about place value;
• our science deign challenge reflections and what we learned from building our wish tree;
• sharing our design challenge learnings with Room 2;
• being leaders with our kindergarten buddies and what it means to role model behavior;
• learning the game camouflage;
• Duke Redbird’s poem: Little Leaf; and
• What strategies we have learned this week for mental math and our morning math routines.

 

Please also don’t forget the important dates below. Have a great Thanksgiving weekend! Remember no school on Friday October 7, or Monday October 10^th.

 

Important Dates

        Oct. 10 - Thanksgiving - No School