Our First VoiceThread

A Peek At Our Week (October 13-17)

This week we received our first postcards in the mail for our Postcard Exchange Project. Our goal is to get a postcard from all 50 states. So far we’ve received 13 postcards from the following states: Florida, Texas, Vermont, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Michigan. In Reader’s Workshop we reviewed our Workshop Plan which is to 1. Choose a book, 2. Read, 3. Think, 4. Read some more, and 5. Respond. In Writer’s Workshop we read Library Mouse which was about a mouse who was an author and wrote about what he knew. He wrote lots of different genres (kinds) of books and he taught the kids that they were all authors, too! This week we used the Activotes (the eggs) to review for our Reading Cycle Test. In Math we worked on Magic Squares, which are squares where each line equals the same sum. On Wednesday we had a very special visitor. Mr. Bren, an artist, came to visit Kennedy School. He started Project Smile, where he leaves his paintings for people to take for FREE! But the new owner has to promise to smile more often! We went to an all school assembly to learn about his project, and then he visited Room 203 to teach us how to draw his creations. He’s so cool! He gave our school one of his paintings. We are so lucky! If you come to Kennedy School you will see lots of smiling kids & teachers! This week we’ve been working on the Halloween Story with our online buddies in Mount Prospect. We write a little of the story, and then they continue where we left on. We are using Google Documents to share and work together on a story. We can’t wait to show you our story when it’s done. We sure have been writing a lot this week!! Our next project with our online buddies is to create a VoiceThread to teach them a math game from Math Trailblazers. Announcement: The food drive is going on at Kennedy, so please bring non-perishable foods. Dominika will be taking Speedy home this weekend! Today we have Music and Computer Lab. We also made our first VoiceThread today. It’s like a mini-movie. Click the link below to check it out:

http://voicethread.com/share/224433/

Have a good weekend!

A Peek At Our Week.....

In Social Studies we reviewed the 7 continents, and the 4 oceans. We made a compass rose. We learned that the cardinal directions are North, South, East, and West. A trick to remember which order they go in is, ‘Never Eat Soggy Waffles”! We also learned the intermediate directions: northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest. In Reader’s Workshop we started writing in our Reader’s Response Journals. When we read books, we think about them and respond in our journals. We put our thinking in writing. They are like maps of our reading adventures! This week we read Wolf and Jumpy Jack and Googily. In Writer’s Workshop we learned another strategy to write personal narratives (true stories). We think of an object that’s special to us. We also talked about the difference between a watermelon story and a seed story. On Monday this week the Schiller Park Fire Department came and taught fire safety. Only call 911 if it’s an emergency. In P.E. we started soccer. Today we’re starting a project with our online buddies, and we’re visiting our Kindergarten buddies this afternoon.

New Mix Tape!

What We Did This Week.........

This week we played football in P.E. In Social Studies we started a new theme! We will be learning about the 50 states. We are starting a postcard exchange project, where we are trying to get a postcard from each of the 50 states. We reviewed the words universe, galaxy, Earth, continent, country, state, and city. In Math this week we used connecting cubes to help us with an addition strategy. We tried to make groups of 10 to make adding easier. In Reader’s Workshop we got new tools, like a journal, a pencil, bookmarks, pointer sticks, and word finders. to help us become better readers! We read Oh The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss. We also read Miss Malarkey Leaves No Reader Behind. It helped us get pumped up about AR (accelerated reader). Some of us even started taking AR quizzes this week!
On Monday we brought back our decorated writer’s workshop notebooks and shared them with the class. We learned two new strategies to help us write personal narratives (true stories). We would brainstorm a special person, or a special place, and think of clear, small moments that happened. In Art we made Christmas Cards for a contest. 1st place winners get a $50 gift card to Toys R Us. 2nd place winners get a $25 gift card. This week we also reviewed and practiced fact/opinion. Have a good weekend!

This Week's News....

This week in Math we worked on Line Puzzles. We cut out numbers and figured out where they went in the puzzle to reach a sum. A sum is the answer to an addition problem. On Thursday, we used our Adventure Books for the first time, which is a comic book for Math! We learned not to copy, but to ask for help if things are hard! In Reader’s Workshop, we learned how to pick Just Right Books using the 5 finger rule and we read the book called Goldilocks & the Three Hares. We “shopped” in our classroom library to find Just Right Books for our book boxes. This week, we also learned strategies to use when we get to a hard word. We should look at the beginning & the ending letters of the word and see if we can also find little chunks or little words we already know! Good readers ask “Does this make sense?” If it doesn’t, they should STOP and go back to re-read. In Writer’s Workshop, we learned that writer’s have a saying: “When you’re done, you’ve just begun!” We learned what we can do if we think we’re done writing. We can add to the picture, add to our words or start a new piece! In Social Studies, we worked in community groups, and made our communities with the buildings we made on the computer. Thursday night was Open House!!! We were so excited to show our parents the Promethean Board & Activotes (we call them the eggs). We recorded our voices so our parents could hear a special surprise when they came! Speaking of the eggs, we got to practice answering questions using the eggs. It was really fun! In P.E. we played football & finished fitness testing. This week, 3rd grade chorus started, too! They will practice after school every Thursday. Have a good weekend!

Class News

This week we started Contract Spelling. On Mondays we always take a pre-test and we decide how many words we want to study for the week. We practice our words all week long and take a test on Friday. In P.E. we had fitness testing. In Math we learned about populations and samples. We did a fun math lesson using different kinds of beans. We counted them & recorded our data in a table first, and then graphed our data. Our first theme in Social Studies is Communities. We learned about the 3 types of communities: Rural, Urban, and Suburban. We live in a suburban community. To see the different types of communities from ABOVE, we used Google Earth. We noticed that in urban communities, like Chicago, all the buildlings were close together, but in rural communities we noticed lots of open spaces for crops to grow. In Reader's Workshop we brainstormed ways to take care of our classroom library. In Writer's Workshop we began writing small moment stories. We learned that authors write about things that they know! This month we're focusing on FRIENDSHIP so we talked about how to be a good friend and read the book Horris, Morris, but Mostly Dolores!