Terrific Tuesday!

Guided Reading - Non-Fiction Detective work!

New Book Week in the Library!

Enjoying a new book - available for checkout after break!

Geometric Art - Cool colors

Finished product - Warm colors

Crazy Sock Art!

First we designed our sock. 

Look at the detail!

We worked hard to add colors and lots of shapes!

We needed lots of focus to do our best.

Almost done !

Just need to add the shoe and we're done!

Field trip wrap up!

It may be a week late, but here are some pictures and information from our field trip.

First, we stopped and listened to Mayor Dan Roe talk about his job.

We went to Public Works  and learned all about making signs and big trucks!

We got to be in class like real firefighters in the new fire station.

Here is a fire truck!

We had the chance to climb into a real truck!

Our last stop was the Police station.  Here we are inside a jail cell.  

We are Thankful

Here is our week in pictures!

Monday -

Writing Thank You Letters

Learning from the Second Grade teachers about eating healthy foods

Tuesday -

Reading about the man who invented the BIG balloons in the Thanksgiving Day Parade

Tracing turkey bodies

Cutting turkey bodies

Decorating!

More detail on the turkey

Working on the feathers

The finished product!

Wednesday -

Thankful Trees

Buddy time!

Learning About Research

For the past few weeks we have been busy preparing to do our first research project with Ms. Zbacnik. In guided reading groups, we practiced locating important information in what we read.  Next, we spent time exploring and learning about non-fiction features such as table of contents and index.

On Monday, we thought of some questions we would want to answer in our research about Thanksgiving.  We came up with three big ideas; Thanksgiving Today, Thanksgiving Long Ago and Food.  We prepared a note taking sheet and headed to the library to meet with Ms. Zbacnik.

On Tuesday, Ms. Z helped us to know how to find facts, how to record them and how to site the books we used.  It was a lot of work, but we had some good information that we could use for our Symbol Book.

Busy researching with Ms. Z!

On Wednesday afternoon we used our notes to write a paragraph that used most of our information.  We wrote a topic sentence and then several sentences with interesting and important information about Thanksgiving.  It was a lot of work!

Thursday and Friday

Thursday during Literacy we learned about non-fiction features.  We learned about the purpose of the table of contents, index, glossary and title page.  We had the chance to practice finding and using these things in real books!  It was lots of fun to work together and read about an animal.  We will put these skills to use next week when we do some research with Ms. Zbacnik in the library!

We love to read!

On Thursday we also learned about the parts of a letter.  We wrote a class letter to Mrs. Brink.  We found out we will be writing letters to our fifth grade buddies.

Our first letter - Pretty good!

On Friday, we started writing to our buddies.  We did a pre-wirte first and jotted down some ideas of what we could include in our letters.  Then, we started our rough draft of our letter.  It is very fun writing to a new friend.  

Busy writing!

We earned extra recess for working hard during Literacy Workshop!  It was such a nice day outside we didn't even need jackets!

Recess friends

Playing together

Determining Importance

For the past few weeks we have been learning another good reader strategy called determining importance.  Good readers are always thinking about what is the important information in a text.  Often they need to separate interesting from important information.  

Today we talked about this chart below.  When we start reading a book, it is like the noodles in a pot of water.  While we read, our brain acts likes the strainer and separates the important information from the interesting information.  By the time we are done reading, our brain has held onto the "noodles" or important information.

Our example with a pot and a strainer

Searching for "noodles" as we read.

Mrs. Biros working with a group to find the "noodles."