Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 2, 2015
This week students and teachers across Floral will participate in our second All School Read! This is where we all read and analyze the same book in order to deepen students’ understanding and promote our school’s core values. The book is called One Smile (McKinley, 2002), and its theme is that random acts of kindness can change people’s outlook in ways that result in ripple effects, which ultimately can change our community for the better. Students will be introduced to the idea of ‘paying it forward,’ and called on to invest in improving the positive atmosphere at school. The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation has a great site for families: And check out this awesome video for inspiration!
Integrating writing and social studies, students will finish opinion pieces about Rosa Parks. They will then choose a biographical figure to research on their own using critical thinking skills (analysis, determining importance, summarizing and synthesis), and state their opinion with evidence for why they think the person was important in history. This is a great example of college and career readiness as promoted through the Common Core standards. When you think about it, the nature of this writing is the underlying structure to most college and professional writing, and it all starts here!
Math work centers around learning x5 math facts, including what it means to multiply (initially, skip counting) and using previously taught methods of finger counting and dot paper. As a reminder, the dot paper is in the homework folder in the resources section and it’s used by counting rows of objects in that array. Note: one of this week’s homework pages asks students to draw arrays. Drawing them correctly is essential to appropriately modeling problems (e.g. a 2 x 3 array is used for modeling 2 groups of 3 things, like 3 boxes of Girl Scout cookies sold for 2 days). For a primer, see last week’s blog!
In science we have learned that when a heat source is applied to water, it evaporates; then condenses into droplets when it cools; then precipitates if it is in a closed system like a jar or even our planet. This week we will answer these questions: Do all liquids evaporate like water? If not, can water evaporate out? What then is left behind? We will use water as a baseline and compare it to solutions of salt water and water with food coloring. Using the skills of inquiry, students will ask questions; make predictions; use scientific tools (petri dishes; droppers; magnifiers); make observations; and draw conclusions. Here’s a link showing how to do one such investigation at home: http://www.shirleys-preschool-activities.com/salt-solution-experiment.html. I encourage you to try other solutions (e.g. water and ???) and send us your results!
Valentine’s Day is coming! We will exchange valentines in class on Friday, 2/13. If your child will be bringing valentines in for classmates, please be sure there is one for everyone. There are currently 21 students in our class; refer to our class list if your child wishes to personalize valentines with names.
The 100th day of school is nearing (at this time, Feb. 6–but every snow day will push it back)! I will set up a “100 Day Museum” to show off student projects and learning. I encourage children to create a poster/collection/display/etc. that somehow represents 100. Instead of simply collecting 100 things in a bag, I’m challenging students to think more deeply about number. They could bring/show something that displays an understanding of number, patterns, and/or the math we’ve done so far, such as: grouping objects (stickers/pennies/etc.) on a poster that shows counting by 5s, 10s, 2s, etc., possibly with accompanying multiplication/repeated addition/division explanations; bar models using 100; create real-world problems with 100. There is also a plethora of projects and ideas on Pinterest and across the web!
Reference: McKinley, C. (2002). One Smile. Bellevue, WA: Illumination Arts.
