OCS Newsletter

NEWS FROM THE MARVELOUS MARTIANS!

Important Dates and Reminders:
Astronomy Presentation: Thursday, December 3 @ 1:00 Please join us!

Portfolio Share: December 18 @ 9:00

DROP EVERYTHING AND READ (AT HOME READING) HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN!! PLEASE HELP YOUR CHILD TO REMEMBER TO BRING HIS OR HER DEAR BAG TO AND FROM SCHOOL!

Math:
The Suns. 3+2+1+4+2+3=??? This might look like a super tricky equation, but to those of us who learned to simplify equations this week it's just a loooooong way of writing 10+5! Phew! That is so much easier!

Do you know how many days old you are? It was quite the challenge, but with the help of calculators we actually figured this out (and practiced our calculating skills!)! It sure makes you feel old when you count the days! Although this was exciting enough on its own, we did not take this on simply for the fun of it. We will be using this information to calculate our age on each of the planets...be sure to ask your child about this Thursday evening!

The Ferns. Addition work continues! We have been practicing all sorts of addition...we drew pictures (there were trees and flowers and pumpkins galore!) and collected cubes to help us solve problems. We practiced these skills on our own, completing full page addition worksheets!!! It was actually quite amazing seeing The Suns apply the things they've been learning about addition to solve problems on their own! Yahoo!

We also practiced using a calculator to figure out how many days old we are, and will work with a partner to calculate our ages on each planet!

Language Arts:
It was quite exciting to start our week out by sharing the pieces of writing that we published! In Writing Workshop we are now working on streeeeetching out our writing into books. We have chosen a "small moment" from our lives and are working on stretching this out, telling what happened next, and then what....creating books with a beginning, middle and ending. From stories about visiting aunts to trips to the park, to going to parties, to tales of the origin of a tiny scar, everyone is working on skills at a just right level. Some of us are just learning to sound out words, including a middle and ending sound...others work on conventionalizing sight words...some work on adding spaces between words...and others on adding vowels! Writing Workshop continues to be a quiet, focused learning time enjoyed by many.

Reading groups this week focused on: summarizing in their own words and predicting what might come next, rereading for fluency, and using the pictures and beginning sound to decode words. While reading groups took place, students also worked on word ladders (starting with an initial word and changing one letter to create a new word, all the way down the rungs of a ladder) and played boggle junior.

Phonics groups this week will be working on: short e, s h sh, and sl sc sn sw.

Theme:
Saturn is the place to be this week! And while you're there check out that "E Ring"! We are fascinated with Saturn's rings--we now know why Saturn is nicknamed the King of Rings...but we wonder why the rings don't have more interesting names! A,B,C,D,E,F, and G just aren't creative enough for us, so we'll be giving those rings some new names! Stay tuned for an update on these!

We've added another page to our planet books and created both our Jupiters and Saturns for our planet mobiles. Jupiter was created using a tissue paper collage and Saturn was painted with Tempera paints. We are trying our best to make these look as life like as possible! It was particularly neat to see Jupiter added to our scale model of the solar system above the wipeboards--it is so BIG in comparison to the other planets! We had to recreate our sun and in doing so realized if we were to make it to scale it would have to be 109 times the width of our Earth which would be much bigger than our classroom! Wow!

We are excited to have a real live astronomer visit Thursday afternoon to share a slide show presentation about the universe with us! Be sure to ask your child about this! It should be exciting!

Investigations:
Much to my amazement, Kynex continue to be a favorite for many. The wheels are in especially high demand, and we've really had to work on coming up with ways to share these. It gives us a nice chance to practice our Giraffe Talk! Their has also been a revived interest in legos...a couple students have been creating obstacle courses for the animals from the blocks!