Gingerbread Fun!

We are having so much fun with our Gingerbread Man Unit!

On Monday we read the classic version: "The Gingerbread Man" We mapped the story by telling the characters and setting and retelling the BME (beginning/middle/end). We recorded this in our interactive notebooks as well.

On Tuesday we read "The Gingerbread Baby." After we story mapped that version, the students had to go back to their desks and write one similarity and one difference on two different sticky notes. They had to include compare/contrast key words (ex- but, however, unlike, same, alike, both) in their sentences.

Today we read "The Gingerbread Man Loose in School" and we worked with a partner to retell the BME. They loved this version!!! So cute.

Tomorrow they will pick one of the first two stories and write a compare/contrast paragraph with the Gingerbread Man Loose in School.

Other skills we are focusing on this week:

Phonics: Compound Words

Antonyms

Verb Tenses (Past, present, future)

Comprehension: Compare and Contrast two or more versions of the same story/ Retelling the beginning, middle and end of a story. (Picking out the most important parts)

Writing: Last week we started the brainstorming part of our letters to Santa. This week we are working on the rough draft. We are focusing on using a traditional outline with an opening sentence, the body and a closing sentence. We are also incorporating the components of a friendly letter which we learned last week as well as persuasive components we learned before Thanksgiving break. We will work on the final copy next week. These are turning out so cute!

Religion: Celebrating Advent and Mary saying "yes!" to God!

Thanksgiving Fun! Peek at the Week

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break!!

 

The week before Thanksgiving was busy, but fun! We stayed busy learning about the First Thanksgiving and writing persuasive turkey essays.

 

The writing prompt was to try and persuade the reader to not eat turkey for Thanksgiving. They had to come up with an alternative food and give reasons why it is better to eat than turkey. This was challenging, but fun!

 

We also had our Turkey and Eagle play. They did a fantastic job! All the teachers said this was the best performance they had seen in a long time!

 

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We were tired yesterday when we came back from break. We are back into the full swing of things today!

 

This week in:

 

ELA:

 

Phonics Skill: Long O (o, oa, ow)

 

Spelling Words: goat, hold, show, most, bowl, float, toast, ago, open, told, toad, slow, almost, throat

 

Comprehension Skill: Drawing Conclusions (using what the text says plus our background knowledge to draw conclusions about the setting, characters and plot)

 

Vocab Skill: Prefixes

 

Fluency Skill: Accuracy and appropriate rate

 

Conventions Skill: Subject Verb Agreement

 

Writing: Friendly Letter

 

Yesterday we learned about the 5 componenets of a friendly letter (date, greeting, body, closing, signature). In centers, we are begining to brainstorm our Christmas lists. We are going to write another persuasive piece- but this time we will format it as a friendly letter. This week we are brainstorming 2 items we want from Santa with three reasons why we want it. Next week we will turn it into a friendly, persuasive letter to Santa! They are SO excited.

 

Religion

 

All about Advent! Yesterday we brainstormed how we can be helpful and show God's love during Advent. Today we talked about the Advent wreath and its significance and prophecies about the birth of Jesus.

Peek at the Week!

We are all things THANKSGIVING this week! Last week we discussed author's purpose, so we are going to add to that this week. Yesterday we read the most hilarious book, 'Twas the Night before Thanksgiving, then we brainstormed a list of foods we could eat instead of turkey. They each chose one food and had to come up with three reasons why we should eat that particular food instead of turkey. For the next few days we will turn the brainstorming sheets into a persuasive essay, convincing our reader to not eat turkey for thanksgiving!

 

Also, we are throwing some social studies into the mix and learning about the First Thanksgiving. Yesterday we read about and discussed why the pilgrims left England. Today we will really dive into the voyage on the Mayflower. Scholastic has a great ineractive website that we will use throughout the week. Tomorrow and Thursday we will discuss the Mayflower Compact, and what life in "The New World" was like. I created little booklets to accompany the website. We will spend time working whole group, individually and in small groups to research using the ipads and computers.

 

There are no new spelling words this week. Just the sight word assignment and fluency passage.

 

We will see you Friday for the Turkey and Eagle performance at 2:15 in the gym!

This Week/Last Week

We have a big week! Tomorrow we have the ribbon cutting for the new turf and Tuesday is our field trip to the corn maize. Students should wear their class shirt and PE shorts or jeans. 

This week in:

Language Arts: 

Phonics Skill: Long vowel -e (-e, -ee, -ea, -y)

Comprehension Skill: Author's Purpose 

Comprehension Strategy: Questioning 

Vocab Skill: Antonyms 

Conventions Skill: Verbs

Spelling words: read, feet, easy, deep, seat, party, wheel, leave, windy, sleep, teeth, team

Sight words: watch, guess, shoe, science, won, pretty, village

Religion:

Congratulations to the second graders who made their First Reconciliation on Friday! We will start a unit on Advent this week. 

All Saints and Halloween fun!

The All Saints parade and reports were a huge success! Thank you SO much for practicing the reports with your child and for preparing such wonderful costumes. I can tell that a lot of hard work went into it. We received tons of compliments. 

The pumpkin festival is always fun to walk through. So creative!!

Boosterthon Fun Run!

We had a great end to our Boosterthon Fundraiser. Thank you SO much for you support. This is our school's biggest and most important fundraiser. It would not have been such a great success without your time and support.

 

The kids had a blast at the Fun Run.

 

And our first Reading Counts Lunch!! 

And finally, PJ day! It was a crazy week!!

Boosterthon Update!

Tomorrow is the Boosterthon Fun Run! Students should wear running shoes, Boosterthon shirt and PE shorts. We will run at 9:15am. You are welcome to join us out on the turf. Water is provided for the students.

Today we had lunch outside with the Boosterthon captains as a reward for being the top earners last Wednesday. This was a blast!

Tonight is the last night for pledges!! We are at $91 per lap. We are soo eager to reach $100 per lap so we can have our pajama party. That's only 9 new pledges! I know we can get there tonight!!

Thank you for supporting us! Look forward to seeing you at the Fun Run tomorrow!

Crazy hat day!