October Happenings

Math Skills - We are continuing to practice basic addition and subtraction facts, as well as word problems.  We've also become quite proficient at reading, creating, and answering questions using various types of graphs.
Plays Galore - We've been able to see 3 plays this month!  Ramona, The Yellow Brick Road, and various Merry-Go-Round mini-plays. 
Student Teacher - Miss Mason started this week in our classroom.  She'll be with us until the beginning of December. 
Tech Progress - Tumblebooks, Spelling City, Type to Learn Jr, GlogsterEDU, Math EduPlace, Storybird, Brain Pop Jr, RAZ Kids, Graph Club, and many more tools and sites.  We'll now start learning how to use more Web 2.0 tools.
Reading Strategies - Predict, Evaluate, Summarize, Monitor and Clarify, and Question are our strategies of focus.  We've been practicing them in whole group and small group settings.  Keep on reading at home!  Students have been doing a nice job on their weekly reading assignments that are done with a parent.

Reminders will be coming home in the next newsletter regarding Parent-Teacher Conferences.  I look forward to meeting you again and discussing more of your child's individual progress!

Problems Solvers at Work

Earlier this month we completed our first of hopefully many math exchanges.  We'd been learning about addition and subtraction, as well as using these operations to help us solve math word problems.  Students worked together in small groups to create word problems together.  Then they used the draw a picture strategy and wrote the number sentence that would solve the problem.  But, we stepped it up a notch and turned this into a collaborative global project and worked with Mrs. Goodwin's students in Indiana.  During our first Skype session, her second graders shared their problems.  During the second Skype session, our classes shared our created problems.  During each call all students worked to solve the problems on their dry erase boards.  Finally, a student shared the solution with the other class.