Week 7 in Review

Greetings from the PBS Class of the Month! We are living up to our name. We continued to be well-mannered and kind to one another in the classroom, the hallway and even on our recent field trip where it was easy to get so excited. When we returned from our field trip, Mrs. Doran gave us a large piece of paper divided into four sections. We spent some time drawing and writing about what we learned at the Outdoor Center.

We are making improvements every day in our writing and Mrs. Doran was tickled pink when she overheard a student say, "This is fun, but I sure hope we get back to school so we don't miss Writers' Workshop." Well, unfortunately for him (and some others) we did miss Writers' Workshop on that day, but we did learn a lot!

One thing that helps us in our writing is that Mrs. Doran helps us learn new words. These are called Word Wall Words because we put them on a wall FULL of words. This week's words all had a common ending. We had fun making new words and rhyming. Because we know the 'ay' ending, we were able to write a lot of words like stay, pray, and tray (to name a few). Many of us are becoming more aware of spelling and making better attempts in our writing.

We continue to 'make connections' in our reading to help our comprehension in room 119. Some of the connections we make are from experiences we've had, and sometimes we can make connections from books that we have read. We continue to amaze Mrs. Doran with how well we can read (on most days) quietly. You won't believe this, but we read for TWENTY SIX MINUTES STRAIGHT! We were so quiet and the only reason Mrs. Doran stopped us was because she had met with all of the students that she needed too!

Often we use the strategies Mrs. Doran teaches us while we practice independently. Mrs. Doran read us a great book called, "Bat's Big Game". Later we read a Scholastic News article called, "Is that a Bat?" and many of us made connections between the two texts. Even though one was nonfiction and the other fiction, we were still able to build our understanding with what we had already read. Making connections is such a wonderful way to build our comprehension!

You may not have heard, but we have started "Show and Tell" in our class. We all will get a turn to bring home a special Show and Tell bag (with directions). We get to choose something special to us and share it with the class. We are working on sharing details orally (when we talk about our special something) and that makes it easy for us to include those details in our writing! After a student shares, we all make a book page about that student's show and tell.

At the end of the week, those students who shared will get a special book with all of our writing in it. Those of us who got books, read them during our "Read to Self" time, but they are free to go home at any time so we can share how we write in room 119. Mrs. Doran has a feeling you will be impressed!

In math we continue to work on money, adding, subtracting and tallies. Mrs. Doran has been meeting with a lot of us individually so she can assess what we know, but you will see a math assessment we took coming home. This is just ONE way she assesses what we know. An S stands for 'secure', a D stands for 'developing, and a B stands for 'beginning'. Mrs. Doran says that we should celebrate if we get an S or a D because that is exactly what we should be doing. If we get a B, look over our work and you can help us practice at home those skills we missed. Remember, practice makes permanent!

Patterns are really important in math so we made our own Halloween patterns this week! It was a lot of fun! Did you know that our Halloween parade and party is next Friday? We hope that you can make it, but if not, Mrs. Doran will take lots of pictures. We also will have our 'Fun Run' next Friday. Please remember to support our PTA. They do a lot of wonderful things for our classroom and school!

As with every Friday, we ended our day with a Mystery Reader. Today Evan's mom came in to read us a wonderful family favorite book that tied in wonderfully to this Halloween season. She did a great job and we had fun celebrating her with our "Fantastic" celebration! Thank you for coming in and reading to us! If you are interested in being a Mystery Reader, check out the link on the right and leave a comment or send Mrs. Doran a message on which date you would be available.

And for your viewing pleasure... Each morning we have a 'calendar' routine led by a 'teacher' (one of us). One of the things that we do each day is practice our right from our left. You would be surprised- in the beginning of the year, many of us did not know our right from our left, but look at us now... FANTASTIC!