Happy last week of school. We are busy working like 2nd graders. Students are finishing their nonfiction rock books with Tiffany.  This week we are also learning about bees.  Students have learned how pollen is spread from flower to flower in an activity where we put our hands in cheese puffs to dig for...
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This week finds students reflecting about progress they’ve made.  In Reading, all students are reading to teachers using the DRA or Developmental Reading Assessment.  The DRA looks at the strategies students use such as:  rereading, checking picture cues, blending the sounds or chunks in an unknown word, and asking what would make sense with...
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This week Tiffany is busy wrapping up her rock unit with the students.  I am amazed at how much they’ve learned in a short time.  Students will be putting the finishing touches on their books about rocks. Children learned how to ask questions and then find the information needed to answer questions.  They worked...
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Hello from Room 12!  After our introduction to insects last week, we’re back to geology.  We started out the week learning about Sed, the sedimentary rock, as well as Morph, the metamorphic rock.  Students began writing their non-fiction books by choosing a research question.  The popular choices were what makes rocks different colors and...
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This weeks finds us challenging ourselves to work independently on our reading and writing. In writing, we are beginining a short author study of Ezra Jack Keats.  We are looking at his stories to see how he takes a small moment and expands it by adding details to make the story longer. This week...
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Guess who’s back… Tiffany! I’m so excited to return to school – I missed everyone in our class so much! Monday we learned about igneous rocks. We made our own “lava” and learned about the different ways that igneous rocks are formed. Monday also kicked off or theater-filled afternoons! ...
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Hello again from Tiffany, I hope everyone is having a lovely week so far and thoroughly enjoyed the sunshine this weekend.  I stopped by the Garden Fair with my puppy, and was so excited to see such a successful turnout.  Thanks for all the hard work from our parent volunteers for making this possible. The...
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Room 12 Classroom Notes 4/12/10 Greetings!  We’ve had a lot of fun learning new problem solving strategies in our classroom over the past week, and had an excellent discussion as a whole class about sharing our Legos during workshop time.  I was very proud of the class, as they worked very hard to meet everyone’s...
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Room 12 Classroom Notes 4/5/10 Hello from Tiffany!  Monday we learned about kelp forests and officially started our seascape!  Students were challenged to make the longest kelp (a bull kelp), and made Matisse inspired beasts of the sea art with Lynne on Tuesday.  We will begin adding more creatures to our kelp forest as we...
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Welcome back from vacation!  I hope everyone had a wonderful break. Our ocean unit is coming to a close.  We are finishing up our tide pool creature books, and learning more about kelp forests.  We will add a kelp forest onto our sea scape, and begin thinking about our animal research.  The Oregon Coast, along...
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This week finds us finishing up our study of Tidal Pools.  Students are making a book that shows what they’ve learned about how animals adapt to the changing of the tides.  We also have started an underwater mural that shows animal and plant life for all of the ocean zones.  After the break, students...
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Another busy week is coming to a close.  This past week found us spending time at the beach.  Students started with the question ‘What is a beach?’  We then looked at how sand is made.   Students worked to together to turn sugar cubes into sand.  They also looked at samples of sand from...
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This week we start our Ocean Unit.  We began the week by learning about Earth, the water planet.  We studied the  globe of the Earth and located the main oceans and seas.  We saw the the Earth was filled with more water than land.  From there we answered the question…What is a beach? We...
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This week we celebrated an important milestone…100 days in school.  We started out the day working on things we could do 100 times such as:  jumping rope, hopping on one foot, and hula hooping.  This was a cooperative activity done with our 2nd grade friends. A good time was had by all.  You would...
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This week we finish up our Fairy Tale unit.   As the unit winds down, we are studying and comparing different versions of the same stories.  Students are busy making ‘trioramas’ to show the setting and main characters from a  fairy tale of their choosing. Students are working hard to create 3D scenes using...
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February is National Tooth Month.  This week we’ll have  a visit from a dental health educator.  The students will learn about teeth health by performing a short skit.This week we also find ourselves wondering about shadows and Groundhog’s Day.  We learned how the position of the sun relates to the different shaped shadows. In reading...
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This week we continue with the Fairy Tale Genre. Today in library, students were looking at the elements of the genre and making connections with the folk tale Ms. Tori was reading. We began our study of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. We worked on the setting of the story and sequencing the events...
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This week finds us living ‘happily, happily ever after’.  During our Literacy Block, we are learning about the genre of fairy tales.  Last week we focused on Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  We brought teddy bears from home and sorted them by attributes.  We compared different versions and made a map with directions to...
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This week finds us looking at Fairy Tales as a genre.  We began with the story Rumplestiltskin.  We talked about the characteristics of the genre and looked at our first story using a check list of those qualities.  In addition to emphasizing the story elements, our activities focused on names.  We compared the number...
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Welcome to the New Year!  We came back ready and set goals for making 2010 a great year. As a class, we talked about being responsible for putting our name on our papers, putting papers in our folders and checking off our tasks on our Literacy Planner. Organization is a key piece of becoming...
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I can’t believe we are getting ready to ‘ring in a New Year’.  As we head into 2010, students are thinking about setting personal goals to decide they want to learn to do in the coming months.  Please spend some time over the break talking about making a commitment to learning to do something...
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Brrrr!  It is cold outside.  Please remember to send your child bundled up with hats and mittens.  It is also helpful to have your child’s name written in his/her coat. Yesterday two first graders mixed up their coats and it took a while to sort out the situation. This week we published our second story...
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