Nov. 11th

Continent Study: Africa! The students have really enjoyed learning about Africa. This is week for Africa we have learned about different flags from numerous countries such as South Africa, Senegal, Kenya, Morocco, and Ghana. The first graders also had a project to research a African animal. The presented their animal research to the class on Friday. Please ask your child what animals they learned about. Please let me know if have any artifacts or would like to come in an share any connections you might have to Africa.

Special Guest

This week Katie Busby came in to talk to our class about a very health food, persimmon. She talked about the benefits to eating persimmon, such as a great source nutrients like antioxidant Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and FIber. She brought some for all the kids to taste and then we voted on whether we liked it, just thought it was okay, or didn't like it. The results were 19 students enjoyed the taste!! Thanks again to Katie for getting us to try something new and healthy. Ask your child what they thought.

Readers Workshop In reader’s we have talked a lot strategies to figure out those tricky words. We talked about taking a look at the cover, thinking what words we might come across in the story. We also talked about using a picture walk and the context of the story to take our best guess. We learned to STOP, and CHECK for UNDERSTANDING. This helps us to make sure those guess we make, make sense with what we are reading about. Practice this with your child’s reading at home.
Writers Workshop:

This week in writing, we started our non-fiction units. The students had a chance to brainstorm all the things they are experts on. There were a lot of great ideas such as dinosaurs, basketball, gardening, jump roping, and school! We also learned about how to tell what we know to a partner and then go back and write down all the facts we know. We made it our goal this week to write by drawing the reader in, having a great lead to our stories.

Student of the Week:

Ian!! has been working really hard to push himself in reading and writers workshop. He tries to choose work from every area to work on each day. He pushes himself to work on more challenging works and keeps his focus on his own work. He is always ready to learn and participate at the carpet. Way to be a great leader, keep it up Ian!