Pride Assembly
Our class is singing a song with 3 other classes at the Pride Assembly this week. The Assembly is on Wednesday, December 18th in the gym. It begins at 9:30 and families are welcome to attend.
Portfolios and Personal Narrative Story
The red portfolios with student assessment information will be sent home this week. Please take some time to review the new information inside before signing and returning it to school.
Most students have published their personal narrative! We have been working on this project since October so it's a great feeling to finally have them completed and ready to come home! I am just working on binding the books. They will be sent home this week and you will find the assessment in the red portfolio. Students are proud of their work, and I am too! I have encouraged students to share their stories with family and friends!
Math
Last week we wrapped up our learning about geometry! Our class really enjoyed composing and decomposing 2D shapes using tangrams. The tangrams are a 7 piece set that can be combined to make other shapes and puzzles. They are great for building spatial awareness, and problem solving skills. You can buy, or even make a set at a low cost.
There are many like this on Amazon:
There are also many inexpensive puzzle books to go with the set:
Students also enjoyed playing a tangram game online:
This week we will be learning and reviewing mental math strategies for addition (e.g., combinations for making ten, doubles, and doubles plus 1). After the winter break we will continue to build our mental math strategies for addition to 18, and then move on to linear measurement.
Today the students were introduced to a really fun card game called Make Ten. It is very similar to Solitaire and is played alone. The game was very engaging and many students asked to play it again!
Social Studies
Our social studies unit about Heritage and Identity: Changing Traditions in our Community is just about wrapped up. Thank you to all of our wonderful parent volunteers who took the time to share with our class. This week we will finish with a special art activity!
After the winter break we will shift our learning to movement, location and mapping. We will explore reading maps, and creating maps. We will learn about the different continents, oceans, hemispheres, and equator.
In February we will begin learning all about Global Communities. Our big focus will be about how climate and physical features affect life in different parts of the world. If you have special knowledge about a different country and the way people live there (jobs, recreation, food, clothing, etc.) and you would like to share this with our class we would love to have you in! Please let Mrs. Gibbs know!
Health
In health class we have been learning about being safe at home, outside, and while using technology. We have also learned about common allergies, and prescription vs non-prescription medicine. In the new year we will be learning about healthy eating.
Literacy
In January we will be focusing on retelling stories, and continuing our phonics/spelling program in Literacy. Later in the month we will dive into our next writing project which is all about writing lab reports!
Winter Break
I wish all families a fun and relaxing winter break! There will be no homework over the winter break. However I do encourage reading, and as much time outside as possible!! Just a reminder we do have a class account on Prodigy. Please see the "Prodigy" page on this blog at the top for more information. If you need your username and password just let Mrs. Gibbs know.
