Family Breakfast

The most fulfilling way to celebrate learning and community in school is with family. In December we had a morning filled with breakfast foods and several arts and crafts activities.  It was heartwarming to see parents and children covered with glitter!  I just may be the luckiest teacher there is to have parents who support their child's educational growth.  Thanks again for all you do to help your child succeed in school. We have so mouth more ahead of us... can't wait!




 

Check out the movie I made with Magisto: Searching For The Runawy Gingerbread Man

After finding an empty oven and lots of candy clues throughout the school building we found our runaway gingerbread man in the library reading many versions of the gingerbread man!

Searching For The Runawy Gingerbread Man

https://magis.to/cC59R0BAEFonfC4GDmEwCX13?l=vsm&o=i&c=e

Gingerbread Man Fun

What would the holidays be without a bit of magic?!  As some serious reading work to compare and contrast story features in several version of the tale of the gingerbread man, we set out to cook our own.  We followed a recipe to measure and mix then molded and decorated our own little man.  Since he was so large, we had to put him in the oven to cook for a long time.  When we returned to take him out of the oven the next day, we were shocked to discover only crumbs and candy pieces left on the cookie sheet!  After a day or two of searching and finding clues, Mrs. Bochansky, our librarian had a strange experience... she had candy pieces stuck in her shoe!  This led us to search the library and lo and behold, there he was sitting in a chair among the many versions of the gingerbread stories!  We still think Mr. Shepherd and Miss LaRose were somehow involved, as we found lots of crumbs and candy pieces in their classrooms!

Evidence on Mr. Shepherd's laptop and candy pieces in Miss LaRose's classroom!

Book Projects: Holiday Focus

It is fun to look back upon projects we have done this year to watch the growth and progression of skills students have gained over time.  With all the technological tools we use from day to day, nothing replaces giving kids construction paper, scissors, markers and glue... you can see it here in their eyes.  Our book creation projects foster creativity and independence as kids are given a brief model and then guided to create by gathering the supplies and thinking about their own steps toward completion.

Thanksgiving provided us with a natural learning opportunity for studying holiday traditions, especially the history that forms holiday traditions and how such holidays are celebrated by different people in our present day time.  In our room, a favorite activity this year was the making of a Thanksgiving book titled Turkey, Turkey What Do You See? based on the familiar text structure in Eric Carle's book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?  Our book recounts the main historical events that define how Thanksgiving began.  Each page in the book was a culminating activity to a history lesson explaining the actions of people who lived many years ago, but whose actions affect how we celebrate the holiday today
 

 

The December holiday season gave us the opportunity to learn about different traditions in December with a main focus on Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwansaa.  We compared and contrasted facts about each holiday as we gathered information about each through books and videos.  This class immediately determined that the central theme they all shared was FAMILY, WINTER, HAPPINESS, GIVING, FUN, THANKS and LOVE!  I was amazed!  In a post to come soon I will show the Venn Diagram they created with these central ideas.

As all of the students in our class celebrate Christmas, each child made a Christmas holiday book similar in structure to the Thanksgiving book.  The book gave them an opportunity to practice reading a repetitive text and look for sight words, too.  Best of all they loved gluing!!

      
  
      

Fiction and Non-Fiction Text Work

Throughout this year we are learning to distinguish the difference between fiction and non-fiction books as well as how to read each genre for its intended purpose.  Common Core instruction places an emphasis on using non-fiction texts for research and informational writing and children's ability to cite sources to support what they learn.  You will find children in our classroom regularly stopping mid-sentence, reaching for a book and saying, "Wait, I want to show you what page I know that from."  They will do this with both fiction and non-fiction, but it is non-fiction text for which we want children using to support their opinion.

In a fiction book we look for the beginning, middle and end of the story structure.  We make predictions about the characters and events during our reading.  A non-fiction text is organized around a specific topic and teaches us something where we gain new learning.  It is organized with a table of contents, an index and sometimes a glossary or headings on pages that guide us to learning the big idea.  We ask ourselves, "What did we learn? and How can we use that information?" after reading the text and cite pages on which we find information.