Chunk Spelling
Part of our word study/spelling program is something we call Chunk Spelling. Each week, we will focus on a chunk. The first week, it was -op and last week was -at. We brainstorm three-letter, four-letter (with blends and digraphs), and big words (words in which the chunk is 'hidden') and write them on a chart. Each day, we do different activities using our chunk words such as spelling games and writing sentences.
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Social Studies
In Social Studies, we read Red, A Crayon’s Story, about a blue crayon that was mistakenly labeled with a red wrapper. Everyone judged Red's ability by his outside (the red wrapper) and did not look within at his uniqueness. We talked about how someone's outside does not tell you what is on the inside. We also talked about the many different shades of red and how even though you would call them all 'red' they are all still so different and special.
We also read Only One You, a story about the wisdom a mother and father fish pass on to encourage self-confidence and self-belief. The illustrator used painted rocks to in her story to show individuality so we painted rocks to show our uniqueness.
The students painted their own rock-fish and said their favorite 'words of wisdom'!
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The students have been doing such a great job of learning classroom/school expectations that they got all their Warm Fuzzies in the bucket last week! Woohoo!
We decided to have the good from our classroom overflow into Mrs. Hentschel's class by anonymously leaving candies on their desks while they were in Judaics class. Our goal was not to get any credit--simply knowing that we did a mitzvah and spread kindness to others in the school is reward enough! (If you are also the parent of one of Mrs. Hentschel's students, please don't spill the beans!) Here they are trying to quickly put the candies on their desks before Mrs. Hentschel returned from the office! We made it in the nick of time!
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Stations
Much of our morning is spent doing reading stations and math stations. The students are in groups and assigned to a station (listening to a book on CD, iPads for research, game tubs, fine motor, dice games, etc.) in which the activities at the stations are tiered according to academic readiness. This time is for practicing skills independently as we as when the teachers get to meet with small groups for reading and math.
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Science
The Primary class is loving learning about insects! First, we talked about our schema (or what we think we know) as well as any wonderings (or questions) we had about insects. We put our post-its up on our chart and will revisit it periodically throughout our study to see if any post-its need to be moved.
Then, we started our research by asking what makes an insect an insect?
We created a can/have/are chart as a group and labeled a diagram of an insect. Throughout each stage of this unit, students document their research and new learning in their science folders.
We also learned a song to remember the parts of an insect!
At the science table, the students have brought in MANY insect specimen! We put them into small magnifying clear boxes to help us look closer at them. We also put out oil pastels for them to draw what they see!
Throughout our research, we are learning that some insects are very important and helpful! The first insect we studied were ladybugs!
After researching ladybugs, the students wrote two facts about them for their science folder.
We learned that ladybugs are important because they eat the tiny plant-eating insects called, aphids.
Each student was given a container of about 20 ladybugs to release into his/her garden at home. Here are some of the photos we received of the ladybug releases!
An ongoing part of our insect investigation involves observing live insects in the classroom!
What better way to learn about insects than by observing them first hand! We have a praying mantis egg sac in one container and caterpillars in another.
Mrs. Hoy is showing the students the fruit flies that will be fed to the praying mantis nymphs when they emerge from their egg sac.
The praying mantis egg sac when it first arrived:
Nothing has changed with the praying mantises yet.
This is what the caterpillars looked like the day after they arrived:
And here they were 4 days later!
When we left on Friday, all of them were still caterpillars (they were HUGE but still caterpillars!) By Sunday afternoon, all but one was in it's chrysalis! However, he was in his J-shape so a chrysalis wasn't too far off
We can't wait to continue watching this metamorphesis in action!
