A Busy Day

We started our day today with a fun game at morning meeting. We practiced sorting and counting our coins as a class around the circle. The word of the day today was "around". It had three syllables. It is sometimes an adverb or an adjective. The word was a rule breaker, because the "o" said the sound of "short u". Later in the morning, we had library. At lunch, Mrs. Myers are with this week's Fabulous Five - Ian, Dawson, Elle, Madison, and Thomas. After lunch, Mrs. Myers read the story, Dandelion. We predicted the author's purpose for writing the story. We decided that she wrote the story to teach us facts and to share her opinion (she liked dandelions). Then, we read the story, The Tiny Seed. This books was fiction. We had to listen for the things in the story that helped the seed grow and the things in the story that hurt the seed. We recorded our ideas on a paper. Weeds like dandelions hurt flowers. Today we visited our third center. Mrs. Myers gave the art center tour today. We are making a giant paper handprint flower. Then, it was time for our district writing assessment. We had ten minutes to brainstorm and plan our story. Then, we had 30 minutes to write our story. At the end, we had 10 minutes to proofread our story. Mrs. Myers will score the stories, and other teachers in the district will score the stories. We will have a conference in a few weeks to see the things we improved this year and set a goal for next year. After recess, Miss Sementelli had a fun math lesson on money. We had money stations around the room. We had to look at the flower at each station. Each flower had money stamped on the petals. We had to count the money and record the total amount on the center of the flower. Miss Sementelli met with each groups to see how we were doing. We are getting good at counting money! We had a fun day! Look for the special project announcement coming home tonight. Please make sure that you visit our weekly survey before Friday!

Miss Sementelli's Big Day

Today Miss S. taught us for the whole day! We started off morning meeting with a fun game matching homonyms on cards. Our word of the day today was "well". It was a rule follower, because it was almost a CVC word. This word was a homonym - well can be a noun of an adverb. We read the words on the "bell of -ell". Later in the morning, we played a word wall game with Miss S, before we went to music. After lunch and recess today, we read Eats, Shoots, Leaves. Before the story, we practiced putting commas in three sentences on the overhead and read them fluently. Then, we heard the story. It showed the same sentence, but the commas were missing in one of the sentences. The meaning changed for the whole sentence. After the story, we got sentences for the story and found a partner with the matching sentence. We practiced reading both sentences fluently. Then, it was centertime. We visited our second center of the week. Next, we had a science lesson today. Miss S. read us the story Tops and Bottoms. Then, we talked about the parts of a plant that give us vegetables. We learned that plants give us vegetables from it's roots, stem, leaves, fruit, and flower. This is how Bear got tricked in the story. After the lesson, we each got picture card with a vegetable on it. We had to put our card into the correct bowl for where it came from. Next was writing workshop. We read the story, Growing Vegetable Soup. We listened for the verbs in the story and made lists of adverbs that would make the simple story sentences more exciting. We had a huge list of adverbs at the end. Adverbs tell us when, where, how, and how much a verb is happening. We had time to write in our journals. At the end of writing time, Miss S. crowned the Adverb King to Thomas for using 14 adverbs in his story and Adverb Queen to Abby for using 11 adverbs. After last recess, Miss Anderson came for our guidance lesson about dealing with our anger. Ask me the strategies I can use. What is the super secret soup breathing? What is "what's up doc?" These are important for me to use! Enjoy the last day of the heat!!! :)

Plant Week

Our theme this week was plants. Mrs. Myers wasn't here this morning. Mrs. Reeves came in , but Miss Sementelli was our teacher - yay! Our word of the day today was "does". It was a rule breaker, because the "oe" says the sound of "short u" and the "s" says the sound of "z". After recess, we had reading workshop time. Madison and Ryan gave puppet show book commercials. The Grasshopper guided reading group gave a performance of their play, The Ant and the Grasshopper. After lunch, Miss Sementelli read the story, Tops and Bottoms. We listened for the main idea and supporting details. There were two lessons, but the biggest lesson was "you can only reach your goals if you do hard work. Then, we had a new center tour. In the first games center, you are sorting contractions on a flower and matching it to the two leaves with the missing words. At the second games center, we are using homonyms correctly in sentences and matching a flower with a homonym to a sentence stem. In the Smartboard center, we are listening to two plant books on BookFlix. One is fiction. One is nonfiction. After the nonfiction book, we are making a glossary to show the new vocabulary we learned in the story. The last center is the writing center. We are sorting flowers into a short vowel or a long vowel vase. Then, we had to write the words. At writing workshop time, Mrs. Lauber read the story, Muncha, Muncha, Muncha. We were practicing Focused WOW endings. After the story, Mrs. Myers read 12 different endings. We sorted them into baskets for each type of WOW endings - something important, question, sequel, feelings, surprise, quotation. Then, we had to decide which endings were focus to the main idea of the story! At the end of the day, we had art.

Continue to Help the Earth

Today was the last day of our Earth Day theme. We want to remember to work to help the Earth everyday, though. Our word of the day today was "run". It was a rule follower, because it followed the CVC rule. We read the words on the "sun of -un". The word run is a verb. To change the word to past tense, you write ran. After recess, we had our first performance of our Earth Day Reader's Theater. Mrs. Cooley and Mrs. Baker enjoyed the first group's performance. After lunch and recess, Miss Sementelli read the story, The Lorax. We listened to see how the tree were cut down during the story. After the story, we made a chart to show the effects the trees had on the whole Earth. The trees effected the air, the water, and the animals on the planet, especially when they were all cut down. Trees are very important to all of us! We wrote down five ways to help the earth on our own. Then, we had make-up centertime. If we finished early, we worked on reading and writing workshop. Mrs. Myers conferenced with us and typed our bug point of view stories. She is sending many of them to the Junior Dispatch for publishing. Next, we had our second Reader's Theater performance. Mrs. Plymire's class enjoyed group two's performance. We were so excited! Then, it was time for music. After music, Miss S. read the sequel to Michael Recycle called Michael Recycle Meets Litterbug Doug. Finally it was time to release our butterflies. Check out the butterfly blog to see how it went. At the end of the day, we heard a story called, My Class is Going Green, written by a kindergarten class. We brainstormed ways to help the Earth while at school. It was a wild and crazy day. We are so excited for the warm weather weekend! Next week's theme is plants!

The Day After Earth Day

Today we continued to learn about taking care of the Earth. Our word of the day today was "cry". It was a rule follower with a consonant blend and a "crazy y". It is a verb. Later in the morning, we had reading workshop and game time. For the game today, we clapped syllables, stretched sounds, and spelled words about Earth Day. Mrs. Myers read with the Ant and the Grasshoppers, the Bears, and the Desert group. After lunch and recess, we had our writing lesson first. Mrs. Myers had us remember the elements of style to use in our stories. We brainstormed similes, onomatopoeia, strong verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Then, Miss S. read the story, Michael Recycle. After the story, we sorted the elements of style for the story into "recycling bins" on the board. We heard all the elements except for similes in this story. Next, we had center time. We visited our fourth center. At math time today, we practiced measuring. We reviewed "units of measure", jobs that use measurement, and ways we can measure. We forgot that measurement was more than using a ruler. We measured weight, capacity, circumference, and length this year. We also talked about measuring speed. Mrs. Myers spread "Earths" around the room and we worked in pairs to measure them in inches and centimeters. Then, it was movie time. We watched the Lorax by Dr. Suess. We will have a lesson using the book tomorrow. At the end of the day, we did a dress rehearsal of the Earth Day Reader's Theater. It still needs a lot of work. Mrs. Myers reminded us to wear red tomorrow to support the Roundtown team at Battle of the Buildings.

Happy Earth Day!

Today is Earth Day! Earth Day began in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson. We are excited to celebrate our Earth. Our word of the day today was "set". It was a verb. It was also a rule follower, because it followed the CVC pattern. Mrs. Myers had us read the words on the "net of -et". After recess, we had reading workshop time. Mrs. Myers met with the Bear and the Ant and Grasshopper groups at guided reading. We read a Weekly Reader to read with a partner at game time. It was all about Earth Day. Then it was time for lunch and recess. After that, we read our Earth Day Reader's Theater and acted out our parts. We found out that we are performing on Friday for Mrs. Cooley, Mrs. Plymire, and Mrs. Baker. We also began making props for our show. Tomorrow, we will work on reading our parts without a partner. At centertime today, we went to our third center. After we finished our center today, we continued to make our props. We are making posters, costumes, and signs to match our part and scenery. At science time today, we did an exclusion brainstorm. We had to predict what words wouldn't be in the story about Earth Day. We didn't think that bathtub, gluestick, television, and banana would be in the story. Then Mrs. Myers read the story, Just a Gum Wrapper. We heard all of our words from the stories, except gluestick and banana. At writing time today, Mrs. Myers read Abby's bug story. Our lesson today was about focused, WOW endings. We practiced putting focused endings on our stories. At the end of the lesson, we heard Elle's bug story with a focused WOW ending. At the end of the day, we had phys. ed. with Mr. Stiffler. Remember to visit Mrs. Myers' teacher page tonight to fill out the weekly survey tonight. Mrs. Myers needs all the data tomorrow! Mrs. Myers also added a new page to her teacher page. It is called - Our Video Projects. You can view the Earth Day movie we made yesterday at this site! Check it out!!!

Earth Day Sharing

Our word of the day today was "small". It was a rule follower. It was an adjective. We read the words from the "ball of -all". Next, we worked with Mrs. Lauber's class to finish our Earth Day writing projects. Mrs. Myers typed them, so we can share them this afternoon. After recess, we went to library. Then, it was time for lunch and recess. For language arts today, we continued to practice for our Reader's Theater. First, we practiced our part independently. Next, we read with our partner. Then, we read through the whole play together. Some people will make props. Some people will bring props. Next, we had reading workshop time. Mrs. Myers met with the Robot and the Seal groups. We went to our second center of the day. Then, it was time for our special Earth Day performances. We practiced in our groups for sharing our performances. Then, Mrs. Myers made a stage. We shared our poems, songs, and commercials about Earth. You can check out today's performances on the blog and soon they will be on a new link of Mrs. Myers' teacher page. Then, it was recess time. After recess, Mrs. Donner was here for Junior Achievement. She taught us about jobs and why we need to have a job. We made a class book about jobs. It is in the library center. At the end of the day, Mrs. Myers read We Are Extremely Very Good Recyclers. It was a Charlie and Lola book. We ended the day with a chapter in Junie B. Jones!