Jan 22-26

This will be a busy and exciting week as we take time to CELEBRATE all that makes our school such a special place to BE!  Each class chose a word to represent what NDLC is all about and decorated their classroom door to match.  Our class selected the word CONFIDENT!  We used the book The Little Engine That Could to inspire us!  Check it out!

Important Dates and Reminders:
Jan. 19th:        ½ Day, 11:30 Dismissal              
Jan. 22nd:        NO SCHOOL          
Jan. 23rd-26th: Celebrate New Directions Week             
Jan. 23rd:        Family Art Night  5:30-6:30 pm  
Jan. 23rd:        Game Day Wear (Characters, Twister, Mario, Etc.)         
Jan. 24th:        Backwards Wear Day         
Jan. 25th:        Family Gym Night  5:30-7:00 pm         
Jan. 25th:        Active Wear Day           
Jan. 26th:        Camping Wear Day

Here is a peek at our week:

Math: In math this week we will review partners of numbers and teen numbers. Some of the activities we will be working on will be:  building teen numbers with cubes to see the ten and extra, playing a game called "toss the chips" to quickly see and record partners of 5, working with flash cards to see teen number equations more than one way (10+7=17 or 17=10+7) and playing a subitizing and adding game called "hide and add" where two dice are rolled and one is quickly covered and students are challenged to give the total of the two dice and then check and record the partners.

Reading:  This week as Super Avid Readers we will look more closely at non-fiction or informational texts and how we can really learn from what we read in them.  To pique our interest in looking more closely at non-fiction topics we will watch this video.   The kids do seem to really like this video and learn so much from watching it, but some may find it a tad scary a first.  There will be lots of discussion around it so I wanted it to be available to you as well :).  Some of the ways we will work with non-fiction books this week we will be: to use new vocabulary we have learned about our topics when talking about our books, finding multiple books on a topic that interests us and comparing and contrasting various books we read.

Writing: We had so much fun sharing our how to books with Mrs. Lenzner's class last week and learned so much about getting tips and suggestions from other writers.  This week we will study another author's work to come up with some ways we can make our books even better.  The students have been working so hard to get more and more writing done each day, but to also improve the quality of writing with each new mini lesson.

Science: This week will bring the arrival of some animals in our classroom!  We worked together to create a fish habitat that is ready and waiting.  We will also create habitats for milkweed bugs and do some observing and comparing of their habitat to that of our zebra fish.  This will help us to better understand what animal needs have to do with their habitat.

Fundations: We will begin Unit 3 in Fundations this week.  This unit includes a less guided approach to hearing the sounds in words and then spelling them.  Students will be given a word and expected to tap out beginning, middle and end sounds independently.  We will then work to spell these words orally, write them and build them using letter tiles. Here is a video that shows the work we will be doing.