It Is Almost November!?

We cannot believe how fast this year is flying by! Before we know it, there will be snow on the ground! As you can see, we have been very busy in our classroom...

At this point, we have moved from just Reading-to-Self and we have begun to Read-to-Someone. During this time, students will pick a partner and find a spot around the room to enjoy a book. There are a couple of key rules that go along with Read-to-Someone:

1.) If someone asks to read with you, you must say "Yes!"
2.) No one should be able to hear you read except for your partner.
3.) It is important to sit knee-to-knee and elbow-to-elbow.

As students are reading and also during our read-alouds, we have been focusing on character traits. It has been amazing to see our students development. Before we began learning about character traits, students would describe a character using words such as mad. Now, they have developed their vocabulary so they are able to describe a character using words like suspicious and devious. Everyone has done such a wonderful job!

We have also been working hard, learning about our community. Recently, students have studied community workers and what they do. They have been able to reflect back on the material we have been learning to decide what community worker they relate to the most. We have also been studying different rural, suburban, and urban communities. We took a field trip (courtesy of Google Maps) to Posen, Michigan and New York, New York to learn more about these rural and urban communities. We had a ton of fun and we even got to see my brother riding a tractor while we were in Posen!

Math time has been full of fun and A LOT of learning. For the past few days, students have been practicing making change by counting up. This is a very difficult concept but our students have seemed to really grasp how to make change. Today, we had fun as the students played store clerk and customer to practice this new skill.

As you can tell, we have been VERY busy! Things will continue to stay busy for the next few weeks. Here are a few important dates to keep in mind...

-November 2nd - NO SCHOOL!
-November 11th - Parent Teacher Conferences (NO SCHOOL for students)
-Novermber 25th-November 39th - Thanksgiving Break
-December 14th - Troy Historical Museum Field Trip

Friday Fun!

Today, a heated rival was created in our classroom as we used our prediction strategies to predict the outcome of Saturday's Michigan vs. Michigan State game. Students were taught what would be a good prediction for a football game like 50 points is a lot of points to score in a game. As you can see, we have A LOT of Michigan fans in our class...

        The true winner will be determined Saturday...

We also had a lot of fun today as Ms. Vereecke put the students' prediction and visualizing strategies to the test. Students were asked to listen to an oral story while practicing to predict different events in the story. They were also asked to paint a picture in their minds as to what the characters looked like, the setting, and anything else they could have imagined. In the middle of the story, the students put their thinking to work and wrote the next page in our story. Our students were working hard and came up with FANTASTIC ideas. They were able to share their ideas with their classmates during a fun "mingling" session. We are so proud of how far our students have already come in their reading and writing.