NEWS FROM THE MARVELOUS MARTIANS!

Important Dates and Reminders:

Workshops: November 20: Evan~milkshakes

Field Trips:
December 11~TBA

No school:
Thanksgiving Holiday: November 26 and 27Winter Break: December 19 through January 3Parent Meeting: December 2 @ 6:00

Portfolio Share: December 18 @ 9:00

DROP EVERYTHING AND READ (AT HOME READING) WILL OFFICIALLY BEGIN ON MONDAY!!

Math:


The Suns. Our work with addition continues in many forms! We started the week by creating butterflies that had a standard number of wings, antennae, and legs. Each of us picked a number of butterflies to create and then figured out how many wings, antennae and legs there were all together. We also used color tiles to make arrangements of numbers and divide them into 2 parts, creating addition equations to represent the groups. Looking at all of our work, we discovered many different ways to make the numbers 5 and 6! It was fun learning a new addition game...Tic Tac Toe. To play this game you roll 2 number dice, each with the numbers 1,2 and 3 and then add the numbers together. You then place a marker on the corresponding number on your board and play until collectively you get three in a row! Our week will end with a game that involves adding together handfuls of different objects.

The Ferns. Many of us are excited to have new "Math Packs" (a collection of assorted addition worksheets)! We spent some familiarizing ourselves with the new packs so that we are able to work on these independently during choosing time. We're having lots of fun learning new addition games that are helping us practice our addition facts, as well as challenging us to discover multiple ways to create numbers. In 5 in a Row we roll 2 dice numbered 1 through 6 (with actual numbers, not dots!) and then add the 2 numbers together. We work together with a partner, covering the answers on our board as we go, until together we cover five spaces in a row! So exciting! Dot Addition was a fun challenge! The boards for this game had 4 numbers on them, like 6, 8, 10, and 12 or 8, 9, 10 and 15. The challenge was to use dot cards (collection of dot cards with numbers 2 through 5) to fill in the board. For instance to create the number 9 you might use a 2, a 4 and a 3 or a 5 and a 4 or a 2, a 2, and a 5. After filling a board once, you record your equations and then try to fill it a second time creating a whole new set of equations. Tricky! We will end our week using colored tiles to create groupings for the number 12.

Language Arts:

This was an exciting week! Not only are we publishing our first pieces of writing, but we also had our first experience with reading groups! We spent our Writing Workshop time this week working on "fancying" up our chosen pieces of writing. This process involved rereading, looking for places to add more detail, for words we left out, for words would like to try to spell again, for capitals, or periods. Everyone worked so hard to fancy up their work at a "just right" level, creating pieces of writing that demonstrate their best effort!

In reading groups, one group focused on using the pictures to help them, while another group focused on locating reoccurring sight words and using background knowledge combined with beginning sounds to figure out challenging words, and a third group worked on using an index to locate information and summarizing what they read in their own words. While groups were reading with me, some students decorated their DEAR (drop everything and read) bags, while others worked on word ladders (an activity where you change one letter at a time to make a series of words), all eventually participating in an independent choosing time.

Phonics groups this week will focus on ch, short a, and l blends. All groups will work on word sorts.

DEAR WILL OFFICIALLY BEGIN ON MONDAY!!!!

Theme:

Well...you'll be happy to know that we made a safe landing on Mars, despite the dust storm! We are covered in red dust, but still learning lots! Did you know that Mars had ice on it's poles...2 moons...and has a day almost equal in length to our day? We haven't seen any Martians yet, but we are looking! We've been busy creating Mars pages for our planet books, as well as puppets of the Roman God Mars, the God of War...bet you can guess why Mars the Red Planet is named after this God. We had an interesting discussion about war...I am truly amazed to hear the thoughts students have about big topics like this! This is an amazing group with quite sophisticated thoughts.

With Thanksgiving on the near horizon we have been talking a lot about the things we are thankful for in our own lives. We're are working on compiling a list and participated in a thank you circle, where we all gave thanks to one another for specific things we've done, like helping to make a paper airplane, or for playing a game together, or for sitting next to someone at lunch...a very sweet ritual. This is our first thank you circle of the year, but there will surely be more to follow! We will be learning some of the history of this holiday and will be create a sequence of pictures representing this story.

Investigations:

Our choosing time continues to be a favorite time of the day. Kynex have still been a top choice this week, although there has been a bit of renewed interest in the Casita area!

We learned to draw turkeys step by step (harder than you may think!) and created lovely turkeys that we painted with coffee! Look for these on display soon! Gobble Gobble! By the way, does anyone know the official name for the red thing below the turkeys beak? We've been calling it the "gobble gobble"...very scientific!