City Hall Field Trip

Wow!  What an awesome field trip today to Roseville City Hall!  

All bundled up and ready to go!  It was a bit chilly.

All smiles and ready to learn!

First we met with a police officer.  She explained what she does for the citizens of Roseville.  We also got to see and holding cell.  Last she let us peek in a police car.

Next we went to the Public Works Department.  We learned about some of the job they do above and below our roads around the city.  We learned about the special material they use for signs.

We also got to learn about the snowplows.  They are amazing machines.

Then we walked over to the Fire Station and met with a Firefighter.  He explained what they do to help the citizens of Roseville.  They have many jobs in addition to fighting fires.  We also got to climb in a real firetruck!

Firefighters have to work in all types of weather!

Last we visited the City Council Chambers and had the chance to meet the Mayor Dan Roe.  He told us about his job and how the city council works.  

Special Assembly

This morning we had an assembly with Auntie Beverly.  She is a storyteller that doesn't read from a real book.  She told us three Folktales. First she told us the story about how the bunny became so fast.  This story is also a book called Zomo the Rabbit.  Next she told us a story about how the little turtle got its hard shell.  The last story was about how it is better to work hard and not be lazy like the bear.  This story is a book called Tops and Bottoms.  She used a lot of voices and taught us some actions to go along with the stories.  We loved it!

Ask your child about his/her favorite part.

Guided Reading

Over the next few weeks we are changing up our Guided Reading time and structure.  We will still meet, but the groups are a little different and we are doing activities in a different way.

Today, I met with a group and we talked about comparing and contrasting.  We read an article about birds and then found and underlined text that supported our answers. 

Blue and Green group

Comparing and Contrasting with a Venn Diagram

Finding text to support our thinking and answers.

Today we

Today we practiced our inferencing skills by looking at a few items from a bag that was found outside our classroom.  We looked at a few items and talked about what this might tell us about the owner.  As we ended the activity, I told this students that the bag was actually my purse.  Ask your child what else we discussed and were able to learn about the owner.  

We read another book by Mo Willems.  We are reading some of his books that do not have familiar characters.  This book had a big twist that took all of us by surprise!  Ask your child about the ending!

Friday we . . .

Today we practiced making estimates and started learning about partial sums.  Below are two examples of how we can add two two-digit numbers.  There are many methods, these are two we discussed.  Students can select what method works best for them.

Partial Sums method.

Drawing tens and ones method.

We had time to finish writing to our Fifth grade buddy.  We also addressed an envelope as well.  We are very excited to have them write back to us.

Math Learning

Today in math we had the chance to explore measurement.  We used a tape measure to measure things around our classroom.  

We also had the chance to explore attribute blocks.  We played a game where we sorted the blocks according to the descriptions on a card and our partner had to guess how we were sorting them.  It was harder than it looked!

Books and Letter Writing

We have been so busy this week with lots of learning!

This week we:
 - learned about the wind
 - learned about voting, completed voter registration cards and had a mock vote
 - worked on finding important details and main idea
 - learned about math story problems including change-to-more and part-part-total
 - finished learning about our brain
 - read many good books!
 - started working on letter writing
 - had a new student join our class (yes, another one!)

Ask your child what they enjoyed about this week!

We started reading books by Mo Willems.

Learning about letter writing.

More examples of letter writing.

Our letter example!  We hope Ms. Z writes back to us!