It's Pumpkin Time!!!

We are busy working in our classroom!!! This week in Readers' Workshop we continue to work on Comparing and Contrasting using Pumpkin Books.  The books Pumpkin Circle, Pumpkin Town and Ready for Pumpkins are some of our favorites thus far!

Comparing and Contrasting have worked really well with these books because there are a number of similarities and differences.  We started with Pumpkin Circle, and used a KWL chart to activate our schema.  

Pumpkin Circle is also stocked full of WONDERFUL descriptive words, so it was a perfect time to discuss adjectives. 

Each student listened for descriptive adjectives as we read Pumpkin Circle, and then recorded the words on our giant class poster!



Finally, Literacy Stations this week have a pumpkin theme.  We are working on Prefixes, Synonyms/Antonyms and sorting Nouns/Verbs and Adverbs!!










All of these games are part of my Pumpkin Pack pictured below!






Click here to purchase a copy of these games!




Parents in my class, please email me for a copy to practice at home with your child!  :)  Have a wonderful Friday!!

Batter Up!!! It's Time for Baseball in October!

We all love baseball!  Especially when the World Series is just around the corner!!  We are celebrating this great sport and gearing up for the World Series with our Math Stations this week.  The students continue to practice writing numbers in different forms, decipher between even and odd numbers and counting money.  Station work has been a lot of fun!  

In the "Batter UP!" station, students practice writing numbers in different forms.

The students wrote numbers in different forms and glued them to either the even or odd number glove.  

At the "What a Catch" station, students work on greater than less than, even/odd and basic number sense skills.




All of the stations are part of my Unit below! If you are interested in purchasing this Unit, please click here. Parents in my classroom, please email me and I will be happy to send you copies so you can practice these games at home!!  :)

Using Mimio Votes!!

We love the Mimio votes!! Today we took a quick math assessment. The students used paper to work out the problem and then answer the problem with a Mimio vote. The answers are automatically graded and the answers are graphed. The students can quickly see and understand their areas of strengths and weakness. The Mimio vote makes taking a quiz fun!!!

Understanding Characters!!

This week in Reader's Workshop, we are continuing our study of characterization.  We want to understand how characters think, feel and change during a story.  This will help us understand what we read. Below are a few examples of what we are working on during class!  

Our goal is to understand what a character looks like on the inside and the outside.  Before writing about characters in a book, we wrote about ourselves!

Reader's Workshop focus wall!

We studied many characters in our favorite stories, including Molly Lou Melon, and Camilla Cream from "A Bad Case of Stripes". We focused on what the characters looked like on the inside and the outside.  

Today, our focus was about how characters change in a story.  We read about "Lilly" from "Julius, The Baby of the World" by Kevin Henkes

The students filled out a response sheet about how their characters changed during the course of  their reading. 

How Do Spiders Eat Their Prey?

In Science, we are working on the scientific method. Our Researcher of the Week presented a science experiment to the class that demonstrated how a spider uses venom to liquefy its venom and eat its prey...yikes! :) To show this experiment, each student placed a sugar cube in a cup to signify a spider stuck in a web. Then, they put some water in the cup to act as the venom. The students watched the sugar cube dissolve and then drank the sugar water with a straw, simulating how a spider drinks its prey. During the experiment, each child filled out papers documenting each part of the scientific method. Some of the "spiders" in our class enjoyed their sugar water better than others:)

Guest Blogger, Wednesday! {Published by our Researcher of the Week}

Hi!  My name is Jackson!  I am Researcher of the week.Today we made characterization charts of ourselves.  My favorite thing in school is math.I hope you like my pictures of my friends!!

Great Website Alert!!!

We are working hard to learn homographs! This website has fun games to help students learn a variety of skills!! This would be a great site to try at home!! :)

Click Here to try!  EZSchool