Happy Wednesday everyone! Week 6 at school was a great one! Monday morning began with a trip to the library. Everyone in our class loves going to the library and browsing for new and exciting books. This week, I challenged the students to choose books they had never read before and that were thicker than usual to last them the whole week. I hope they are all enjoying reading at home!
After the library and our morning meeting, we had our last math lesson for the concept of number representations. The students played a fun game with dice while I called them up one at a time to show me what they knew about multiple representations. Everyone in this class is a wiz!
After recess and snack, we practiced the reading strategy of visualizing some more. I read the class a Magic School Bus book called "Liz Looks for a Home" (I sneakily read them a story about habitats and animals homes as this was what our next science lesson would be about later that day... shhh!). While I was reading, students closed their eyes and visualized what they were hearing. Then, they practiced turning their visualizations into pictures. It was fun and everyone did a great job!
For science this week, we began a new unit on ecosystems and biodiversity. We started with an ecosystem sensory box, filled with objects I gathered from my backyard. I asked to students to look at and touch the items in the box and to try to guess what our unit would be about. Everyone guessed it right! Next, we watched a fun video all about ecosystems and brainstormed some ways to identify an ecosystem as a class. This is a great unit and I have some fun things planned so I cannot wait for the next few science lessons!
After lunch and silent reading, we had a lesson on kindness. November 13th is World Kindness Day and, as such, the other elementary U-Connect teachers and I have planned an activity to help the students learn about spreading kindness in the community. We listened to a story about being kind and, after a discussion about the importance of being kind and how there are some people that have been lonely and may need someone to add a smile to their face, the students drew beautiful pictures to send to a local senior's home! We will continue the discussion around kindness as we get closer to World Kindness Day.
Finally, we finished off the day by having the students share their life cycle posters. This was so fun and I really enjoyed seeing each student be proud of their learning around life cycles! Their peers were attentive listeners during the presentation and all enjoyed learning about the different animals!
On Tuesday, we began a new unit on addition and subtraction. We reviewed addition skills from the last few years by practicing "making what I have". To do this, we all had mini whiteboards and paper clips. I told number stories and the students practiced making the addition sentences with paperclips and pictures. I can tell this concept made sense to everyone and we can move onto more complex addition.
In science, we continued learning about ecosystems and focused on the concept of living vs. non-living things. After brainstorming a list of characteristics of living things, we played a group game of spotting living and non-living things in pictures of ecosystems. Everyone did a fantastic job!
Our afternoon included P.E., some buddy reading, and a fun fall-themed writing activity. In this activity, students combined writing, some art, and social-emotional learning by creating self-affirming pumpkins. This was a great way to remind students that, not only is it important to be kind to others, but also to be kind to ourselves. This was a great way to finish off the day and you can check out your child's pumpkin in their backpacks!
While this week was fun, I truly cannot wait for next week and all of the fun we will have with our Halloween/Fall celebration, as well as our Diwali and Indian Culture stations!
Have a great weekend!
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