Monday, March 2, 2015

A brand new month!

I CANNOT believe it's already March! I feel like the year has flown by!!

What we did today:

Reading:  We started the 2nd week of our Unit 7 Imagine It.  This week we are reading the story of The Little Engine That Could.  We're learning about perseverance and never giving up.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!

We're also learning the /aw/ sound as in hawk.  This sound is spelled both "aw" and "au_."  We did several word sorts this morning as a whole class on the Promethean board.

Guided reading:  The kids in my reading group practiced reading independently this morning.  I completed two Dibels assessments (I actually finished all my group's TRC's last week! Even with only 1 1/2 days of school! Woohoo!) and then I did reading conferences and had my group to select books from our classroom library based on their reading level.  They put these in their book baggies for the week.  My plan is to eventually do this for the whole class so that I can make sure every child is reading quality books on their level.  And so we don't spend so much time looking at books/selecting books and not reading.  

Math:  We're still comparing numbers.  The snow has really pushed us back.  I've kept pushing our lesson plans forward so it feels like we've been comparing numbers FOREVER! My impression is that most of the class is doing well with this.  I focused on listening to individual kids use the terminology "greater than/less than" today in whole group and several of them seemed to be able to state this correctly, which I was not expected.  We then did a worksheet where the kids had to correctly cut out the hungry alligator greater than/less than and glue it to the correct place between the numbers.  I haven't checked these yet, but I'm interested to look at how they did.

Social Studies:  We're still plugging away on our George Washington unit even though it's March.  Our next unit is about maps and we really should move on to that because of time, but the snow, again, through us off.  I made A LOT of copies and I even got folders for the kids to use in this unit.  The kids are so into it and we even have 2 mini books to read with it (sneaking in that reading component whenever we can!) so I really don't want to move on just yet and waste what we've already done.  Look for these folders to go home at the end of the week (unless we have MORE SNOW!! AAGH!!).  

Recess:  WE GOT TO GO OUTSIDE TODAY!! AND WE DID NOT FREEZE!! WOOHOO!!

Tomorrow:  Jump Rope for Heart after school

Wednesday:  Field Trip to Mrs. Hanes cookie factory : )  Mmmmm!!!