Pausing to listen to an airplane in the sky, stooping to watch a ladybug on a plant, sitting on a rock to watch the waves crash over the quayside - children have their own agendas and timescales. As they find out more about their world and their place in it, they work hard not to let adults hurry them. We need to hear their voices. ~Cathy Nutbrown
I cannot believe that another month has passed (and half the school year) and it seems as if the kiddos have grown up overnight! We were recently reviewing pictures of them on the first day of school and could not believe the differences. Of course, those are not the only differences we have seen. Historically, January and February are a big time for children to begin applying all that has been worked on the first four months of school. Every kiddo in our classroom has blossomed in his or her own way and shown tremendous growth! We recently completed our DIBELS benchmark assessments and the results were amazing. Every student had significant growth in at least one area and most students in both areas (first sound fluency and letter identification.)
Now, on to the fun (and of course, educational) “stuff” that has been happening! First of all, we welcomed a new friend to our class~and boys are certainly over-taking our population! We all were excited to have another friend and he seems to have fit right into the mix!! Welcome Rocky!!
This month we have been working hard on our research projects and we are now compiling all of the information we have found and putting it together. Our goal was to wrap this up in January; however, we are having so much fun we are going to spend some more time finishing them up. We have learned great vocabulary such as equator, southern hemisphere, predators, rookeries, prey, species, and habitat. Pictures of our completed project will come later!
We worked in groups to work on a
schema chart to show what we already knew about penguins and we have been
adding to our “New Learning” every time we meet in our small groups. Here
are some of the great ideas we have come up with. The misconception
section will be completed as the culminating activity of our research.
We have
integrated our penguin theme into math a bit as we learned what it meant to
add. We became great problem solvers, and then we worked on
authoring our own word problems (combined with a bit of craft.)
As we were
working on Penguins in one of our groups, we were working hard on other Polar
Animals with Mrs. Saggese.
Penguins,
Polar Bears and Martin L. King, Jr., oh my!
It was a busy month. We took some
time out to talk about Martin Luther King, Jr. and talked about diversity and
peace. At share time, one of our kiddos
brought a book to share about MLK. (Our
share rules ask students to bring things based on our monthly theme or weekly
letter of the week.) He enjoyed sharing
his book with his friends and teaching them more about MLK.
The function of education is to teach one to think
intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the
goal of true education. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Other great
things happening in our classroom include our fabulous handwriting
program. We are so fortunate to have
Mrs. Rissberger come twice a week and do our
handwriting program. The students have
responded well to this program and they look forward to her arrival! Here are some pictures of us working hard on
our handwriting!
Our
big buddies from 3rd grade. We love spending
every other Friday with them listening to them read, reading to them, or
completing theme based activities.
We had two
Star Students this month. Both had a
guest parent join us to spend some time in the classroom. Their beautiful smiles light up as they share
with the class all about their lives.
Whether it is bringing a snack to share, a science project, or talking
to us about their culture, the students LOVE the opportunity to stand in the
room with one of their parents. One of
these young ladies shared her reading ability as she read a Henry and Mudge book to the class and the other surprised us with her
lovely singing voice as she shared her favorite song!
We have also
enjoyed many other fun times including having some indoor playtime due to the
cold weather outside:
Learning to
use the iPad:
Working on
using a checklist to check our own writing in our journals:
And~what are they are doing in these
pictures? Ask your children about Mrs. Saggese’s “Brain Breaks!”
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