Learning, Growing and Celebrating Together!

We completed the month of January with our nonfiction publishing party!  We celebrated each nonfiction writer in Mrs. Belisle and Mrs. Hock's classroom by reading each writing piece and sharing positive feedback about their writing on our Publishing Party Positives sheet.  Each student chose a lollipop flavor based on a skill they felt brought "flavor" to their nonfiction writing.  

Our new writing unit is opinion writing.  We are writing about our favorite books and authors to kick off this unit.  Our learning is about creating sentences of opinion, providing evidence to support our opinions and using illustrations to help guide our understanding.  This week we wrote letters to future readers of these books as well as authors and illustrators to excite, share gratitude and opinions about the books!  

As mathematicians, we started our unit on measurement.  We have measured with a teacher foot and transferred that nonstandard unit of measure to the knowledge that one foot = 12 inches.  We measured with yards, learning that 3 feet = 1 yard.  We made inchworm rulers!  We are measuring items both large and small, estimating and measuring to compare.  

We are singing The Fifty Nifty United States as we learn about the geography of the United States of America.  This week we used political maps and labeled one with state abbreviations, physical maps to identify landforms and levels, and a map of national parks supported by google earth to share some of the beauty in these places. We are looking for donations of photocopy boxes, with the lid, for a final state project. We will need one box for each student.  Thank you!

We celebrated the 100th day of learning together.  We took new photos in our 100.  We counted 100 items, we skip counted by 100's.  We added to our memory books to share how smart we are.

Flat Stanley's continue to arrive!  We are learning so much about the United States from your kind contacts, their enthusiastic responses, and letters.  Each time a new Flat Stanley arrives we display them on the map in the hallway.  We look forward to each letter we continue to receive.  

Thank you for all of your donations and time as we celebrate Valentine's Day this coming Thursday.  We will decorate Valentine bags in advance so the students can share their valentine's with each other.  

Thank you for all you do,

Jen Belisle