Day 47- Welcome Back!

It was a good Monday back from Fall Break. (It's not too often you can say that!) My soldiers came back ready to learn and I came back sleep- deprived, but ready to teach! (It's my own fault for being sleepy. I just finished the new book in the Heroes of Olympus Series- it is sooooo good!)

 In TIER II (reading intervention) we started new sight words, found HERE, and we worked on a fluency activity with a new Level A book.

If you've ever wondered about the different levels in books, well, join the club. Last year our school used Rigby levels, and this year we are using Fountas and Pinnell. The difference between the two- Rigby used numbers and the F&P uses letters. A Level 'A' book uses a lot of repetition.

I can see a cat.
I can see a dog.
I can see a balloon.
Once a child can recognize the repetition of the text, it becomes easier to read. The books on this level focus on using easy sight words. The trick when teaching with this type of text is having activities that ensures that the student really is learning the sight words and new vocabulary, not just depending on the pictures to 'read' the text.
So far, I've been very impressed with how quickly my TIER II students have picked up on their sight words since the beginning of the year and have worked hard on learning new vocabulary words.

Math's focus today was Adding 0,1, and 2 to numbers up to 12. Basically, students learned that when you add zero to a number, the number stays the same.
Me- 1+0
Students- 1!
Me- 10 + 0
Students- 10!
Me- One Gajillion + 0
Students- (stunned silence)

A brave soldier- One Gajillion?
Me- Right! The number never changes!

When students add 1 to a number, you just count UP! We began by counting to 20 by ones. Easy enough. We just needed to remember to count up to the next number!

Adding 2 was a little more difficult. Most of my students chose to use the "Put the number in your brain and count up" method. For example- let's use the number sentence 8+2. Students would take the bigger number, 8, and place it in their brain. (8,8,8- tap, tap, tap) Then the students would count up two times. (9...10) and they would have their answer!
The problem we ran in to... no one had 11 fingers and I wasn't willing to let anyone take off their shoes. Students just had to count up without being able to show the whole number.

During whole group we worked on Pronouns. I explained that there were sometimes when I just don't have time to use specific nouns. When I get too lazy, I use Pronouns. Of course, we made a chart.

We used our Big Book read-aloud to do a little practice. We read through the story once, then we read it again while taking out the nouns and filling in pronouns in their place. We decided we didn't like the 'only pronoun' version very much because pronouns can cover too much. Without a few nouns sprinkled in, we didn't know what the story was about!

In case you were wondering, the story is about a little girl who grows a little plant and takes it to the County Fair. It doesn't fit in with the other flowers, but the girl doesn't care. She takes the flower home and replants it and is happy.

Of course, this is the way I learned Pronouns!

Small group reading and Literacy Centers time!

 

 Spelling Texters

 This week is a short week, so I didn't want to print out a whole new set of Read, Build, Write cards when one team wouldn't get to use them. So instead, I had my students review the vocabulary from our last story.

Last stop- Social studies. This week's topic of interest- Antarctica. By looking at the KWL chart we created, I think my students were still thinking of Australia.

Before we created the chart we found Antarctica on the globe. We talked about how since it is located at the bottom of the globe, it must not get much sun. And, if it doesn't get sun to keep it warm, it must be cold. My students could understand that concept, but they couldn't make the jump from being very cold, to not being a place where jungle animals could live.
After filling out the K and W sections, we talked about the movie Happy Feet. As soon as I mentioned that movie, all of the light bulbs inside their heads went off! We visited National Geographic to learn more about Arctic animals. THIS is another great part of the National Geographic site. I'll have to make sure I show it to my students tomorrow!

**REMINDER** Parent/ Teacher conferences are all this week! I had 4 parents come in today! I will be available tomorrow until 6pm. On Wednesday until 4:30, and Friday is a half day and I will stay until 3:30. Come by anytime! You will receive your child's report card at the conference.

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