Please note that a few important letters were sent home this week in your child's home/school folder:   

1. There will be no school for kindergarten on April 10th and 11th.  These days have been set aside as orientation for next year's incoming kindergarten students. **All other grades will have normal school days.**
2. The block schedule rotation for April was sent home as well.  Due to the SBAC testing, our computer lab time has been moved from day "D" to day "C" throughout April and most of May.
3. Another important letter was regarding placement for next year's 1st grade classes.  I understand that Kristi spoke with you prior to going on leave and took detailed notes on discussions involving your child's placement.  Those notes have been turned over to our kindergarten Team Leader and my understanding is that Kristi is planning to be involved in the placement process.

This week wrapped up with an exciting visit from Animal Embassy!  Our visitors included tiny tree frogs, a rather large iguana, and a chinchilla, to name a few.

Reading Workshop - Reading continues to be an adventure!

• We continued to practice using pictures in books to help us learn more than just what's written on the page.  Readers were given the opportunity to practice doing this on their own and also with their reading buddy.
• Readers worked more on comparing two books on the same subject (both fiction and nonfiction) to make comparisons and see how we can learn from both.
• We have started looking for patterns in nonfiction books, and asking ourselves what the author is trying to teach us.

Writing Workshop - We continued our unit on "All About" Books!

• Writers continued to work on their "All About Me" books.  
• We discussed the difference between "How To" books and "All About" books.  (Important take-away: "How To" books tell us how something is created and "All About" books teach us about something that already exists).

Math: This week, we continued to practice story problems.  Children worked with partners playing a variety of games that allowed them to make up their own story problems.  Using various manipulatives, we practiced different ways to arrange the same number of cubes, counters, etc.  This is an important concept as it allows children to see that an arrangement may look different, but still consists of the same number of items.  In the coming week, we will begin the "Apple Boxes" unit by Cathy Fosnot (this unit is connected to the "Bunk Beds" unit that the class completed with Kristi prior to her leave).

Social Studies/Science:  We continued our unit on "living and nonliving" things.  Students sorted a variety of living items in to people, animals, and plants and also sorted a variety of items in to living or nonliving.  We discussed habitats and watch a short movie through Discovery Streaming that taught about habitats and some ways that plants and animals adapt to their environment.  We will be discussing this in more depth in the coming weeks.  Our visit from Animal Embassy was a perfect complement to this unit.


Technology: This week, our Smartboard center focused on counting and putting numbers in order from 1-100.  All groups had the opportunity to play the game, spread out over a 2-day period.  As noted above, with the older grades completing the SBAC testing over the coming weeks, we will be in the computer lab on day "C", rather than day "D", throughout April and the majority of May.

This week began with a fun St. Patrick's Day celebration and ended with a valuable Kimochi lesson, during which we made Kimochi soup!  To acknowledge the first day of Spring, we colored beautiful garden books to bring home for you.

Reading Workshop - Reading continues to be an adventure!

• We reviewed the technique of using pictures in books to help us with tricky words.
• We also worked on using pictures in books to help us learn more than just what's written on the page.
• We discussed the value of reading more than one nonfiction book on the same topic (we practiced by reading two different books about baby animals and discussing the similarities and differences between the two).
• Readers discovered that we can compare a fiction book with a nonfiction book on a similar subject, and learn from both.
• Next week, we will be reading nonfiction books, looking for patterns in them, and asking ourselves, "what was the author trying to teach me?".

Writing Workshop - We continued our unit on "All About" Books!

• Writers continued work on their "All About Me" books.  
• Writers who have completed their "All About Me" book are beginning a new "All About" book, using a topic that they are experts on.

Math: This week, we introduced story problems and talked about visualizing the story in our head.  We "acted out" a few story problems and discussed various ways that we could figure out the answer.  We will be continuing to work on story problems moving forward and will be discussing the idea of "more or less" in the coming week.

Social Studies/Science:  We have begun our unit on "living and nonliving" things.  For the purpose of our studies, in order for something to be considered "living", it must need air, water, and food, and it must be able to grow.  We also classified living things into 3 categories: people, animals, and plants.


Technology: This week, our Smartboard game center focused on identifying and recognizing upper-case and lower-case letters.  All groups had the opportunity to play the game, spread out over a 2-day period.