I hope that you all enjoyed a wonderful April vacation!  It was nice to have a little break, but I missed the class so much and was thrilled to see them again on Tuesday!

***Please remember that the "STAR" book that is being circulated should be returned after one or two nights so that it may be passed on to the next student.  We will have a new book to share shortly but it will need to be passed around diligently in order for everyone to have a turn with it before the end of the year.***

Reading Workshop - Tackling Tricky Parts in Books

• During this unit, we will be reviewing the tools that we've learned throughout the year and tying it all together to help us read more challenging books moving forward.
• This week, we took time to look at the entire book (front and back covers, table of contents, took "picture walks", etc.) before even reading a page.  This helped us to predict tricky words that we might see in the book, making it easier to recognize them when they come up.

Writing Workshop - In My Opinion....

• This week we wrapped up our unit on "All About" books.  The class completed their "fancy copies" to be hung in the classroom and brought home at the end of the year for you to keep.
• The launch of our persuasive writing unit took place this week as well.  We began by discussing the differences between fact and opinion.  Then we thought of some of our favorite things and why we like them so much.  Through partner work and whole-class activities, we learned more about forming opinions and have been focusing on going to the next level, explaining why we feel the way we do.  In the coming weeks, we will be working on "In My Opinion" books and we will also move in to some letter writing.

Math:
We completed the final lesson in "Bunk Beds and Apple Boxes", in which the children played a form of Bingo with number cubes, Unifix cubes, and a "game board".
Our next unit will be focusing on shapes.  Through whole class and individual work, we have looked for various shapes in the "real world" and have worked on verbally describing different shapes so that others can guess the shape.

Social Studies/Science:
Our week started off with Earth Day, so many activities this week focused on the environment.  We discussed the concepts of "reduce, reuse, recycle" and watched Brainpop Jr. videos about recycling and endangered and extinct species.  Our week finished off with the class planting tomato seeds which will be planted in our outside garden later in the year.


Technology: This week, we played an addition game in the Smartboard center.  All groups had the opportunity to play the game, spread out over a 2-day period.