Our Week

Our phonics focus this week was on r blends. We practiced sorting r blend picture words in groups on Monday, finding r blends in our weekly poem on Tuesday, alphabetizing our words on Wednesday, and making r blend words on Thursday. Today we did a quick spelling and reading assessment to end our week with r blends. 

The comprehension focus this week was main idea and details. In order to help the students understand the concept of main idea, I brought in several mystery bags with various clues. After showing the clues to the students they had to guess the main idea of my bag. For example, one bag had a measuring cup, cookie cutter, spatula, and whisk. The kids used the clues to figure out that the main idea of that bag was baking. After doing some whole group practice, the students had the chance to go on their own main idea mystery hunt around the room. They used picture clues to solve the main idea of the various bags throughout the room. After practicing identifying main idea we applied this to our read aloud text about bats. The students drew detailed pictures from the text on puzzle pieces. We discussed how all the pieces of a puzzle are details that come together to create the main idea of the puzzle, just like all the details in a book come together to make the main idea of the book. After that, the students used what they learned about main idea and details to make a simple web about the story they read, How Animals Communicate. Today, we used what we have learned about animals, main idea, and webs to create team posters. Since the students got new groups today, I made each team decide on a group name that was an animal. Then, they had to use the books that corresponded to their animal to do research about their animal. The details they found out about their animals had to be used in a way they could apply them to classroom procedures, rules, and expectations. For instance the tiger group, said they were going to follow directions quickly because tigers are fast. The kids had so much fun with this, and it really encouraged some creative as well as fun thinking. 

In math, we began shapes. The first part of the week we practiced identifying triangles, squares, rectangles, and circles as well as getting to know their attributes.  We discussed more specifically how many corners and sides all the various shapes have. Then, we made shape monsters only using paper triangles, squares, rectangles, and circles. After the kids made their monsters they wrote about their monster's features (eyes, mouth, nose) and what their monster can do. Once the students learned all the shapes attributes, they then learned how they can sort shapes. They practiced sorting shapes and comparing how they are alike and different based on color, shape, and size. Today we finished learning about 2-D shapes by paritioning shapes into halves and fourths. The kids enjoyed using (and eating) cookies to help them demonstrate their understanding of fractions.