First Grade Writer's Workshop: We have begun our nonfiction writing unit! This week, we focused on writing teaching books with independence. We learned that:
- Writers teach all about their topic by organizing their information and using a teaching voice.
-Writers plan by telling information across their fingers, sketching, and then writing.
-Writers of information books need to ask, "Who am I teaching?" to reach their readers, imagine and answer their questions.
First Grade Word Study: We continued to focus on base word + suffix s and the snap words: were, are, who, what, when, where, there, here. This week, we learned that suffix -s can make a noun (person, place, or thing) plural (more than one) and that, when it is added to an action word (verb), it shows that someone is doing something at the moment (ex: sips).
First graders work hard during Writer's Workshop and Word Study! Sometimes, we just need to stop and have a dance party!
Grade 2 Writing and Word Study:
Our nonfiction writing unit is now in full swing! Here are our big ideas:
We used numerous books by Seymour Simon and Gail Gibbons to search for craft moves we could add to our writing. Some ideas were:
labeled illustrations/drawings, maps, close ups, lists, bold words, glossaries, tables of contents, fact boxes, different paper choices. Writers started adding these to their books on Wednesday-it was a very exciting writing class!
Our word study focus for the next three weeks will be silent e (called the v-e syllable), multi-syllabic words with two different syllable types ( closed and v-e, ie confuse), when to use an s or z in v-e words, compound words, the suffix -ive and -ive as a v-e exception. Our new snap words are: only, house, move, right, place, together
Theme time-Engineering challenge with Mr. Miller.
First they designed towers out of paper that had to be 20 unifix cubes tall. They were tested for strength and stability by placing pennies, ten at a time, on them. The class traded in the pennies they earned to design new towers after watching and learning why their first designed failed. Ask your child how many pennies we earned-1 penny for each ten our buildings held. It was very impressive!
Next they moved on to designing bridges that met certain criteria.
They worked hard and as you can see had a blast.
Thank you Mr. Miller!
And another thank you to Monica Littlefield for arranging a performance by these talented musicians from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. We enjoyed learning about their traditional music and step dancing.
I will close out with photos of the art projects they worked on before the break-enjoy!
