Quote of the Week: During a hunt for prisms on the playground, a student proclaimed with amazement, ”Woah! Its incredible! We are standing on top of a giant sphere! The Earth!”

We finished up our unit on the scientific method and started our new unit on the human body this week. This week we focused on the five senses and the organs that are associated with them to kick off our human body unit. On Monday, we learned about our ears and hearing and went on a listening walk. We wrote down as many sounds as we could hear outside and then came back inside to do the same thing and compare outdoor and indoor sounds. Students were able to come up with over 30 sounds that they heard for each location! Then we brainstormed good sound words to use in our writing like crunched, beeped, whispered, and rustled. We played a wiggle game where I gave students an animal and they acted out that animal and the sounds that it makes. On Tuesday, we learned about our eyes and seeing. We checked pupillary response to light and learned that how our pupils dilate. We also learned that the eyes take in information and send it to the brain can figure out what it is. We read a story called “The Deaf Musicians” and talked about what it would be like to be missing a sense like a deaf or blind person. Then we played a game where one student was blindfolded and their partner directed them to perform tasks through positive communication. We debriefed about what it felt like to be without sight, and how you can still do many things but sometimes it may feel scary to do them without help from another person. On Wednesday we learned all the jobs our nose does like smelling and keeping dust from getting into our lungs. We drew pictures of our favorite and most terrible smells. On Thursday we learned about feeling and went on a texture hunt to feel a variety of surfaces and find good feeling words like bumpy, fuzzy, rough, hard, cold, etc. On Friday we learned about our tongue and taste. We did a few experiments to test how important our tongue is in a variety of tasks; for example, we held our tongues and tried to talk. During writer’s workshop students explored through their senses objects from “Owl Moon” before reading it together. For example, we used our all of our senses to experience; snow, pine needles, dirt, a pine cone, and a soundtrack of an owl hooting. Students all agreed that they were able to relate to the story better after experiencing things from the book through their senses and how important it was to use sensory details in our writing.

Photos page one (top to bottom): Lucy guiding Maya to complete a task while she is blindfolded to learn what it’s like to lose one of her 5 senses, Ethan checking Marcus’s pupillary response to light, Henry smelling pine needles before reading “Owl Moon.”

Photos page two (top to bottom): Nico finds a sphere on the playground during a prisms hunt, Koben’s grandmother visits to teacher us about Antarctica, students work collaboratively during choice time to create a colorful railroad design around the room

K/1 Weekly Newsletter - March 2, 2012

Unit of Inquiry Updates

Math Minds at WorkBlue Math:This week the Blue Math Group continued working with addition & developed a better understanding for subtraction! The students were exposed to Geometric shapes and compared them to a variety of shapes in the classroom. The students had a blast taking a 'Magic Carpet Ride' while measuring the area of it using non-standard units (children).  We are also working on skip counting by 2's, 5's, & 10's. This week and in the following weeks to come we will be doing a lot of practicing writing our numbers.

Yellow Math Group: This week we focused on grouping by tens and leftovers (ones.) We applied this concept in a variety of ways so students could fully grasp the idea. We also played with hundreds charts and found patterns on them by counting by 2’s, 3’s, 5’s and 10’s. Then we learned how to use them for addition and subtraction through strategies like counting, up, counting backwards, and jumping up or down for +/- 10.

Green Math:This week, our green math group students continued to explore and practice subtraction using both the short-cut method and base-ten blocks.  On Friday, each student used base-ten blocks to create, solve and and present on a subtraction problem with large numbers.  This allowed the students to see the tricky concept of "borrowing" in action; this is a challenging concept that students should grow more comfortable with as we continue to practice and investigate it in coming weeks!

Red math group:The Red Math Group finished up our investigation of x,y coordinates and mapping objects, which included a foray into using scale.  We then began a unit on exploring and using patterns in data to make predictions.  The first part of our unit focuses on measuring mass in grams.  Students collected data on mass of various objects, organized into tables, and graphed their data.  We looked at how number of objects correlates to mass and used our data and graphs to make predictions and solve problems (using multiplication).  Next, we will be solving word problems that build on these concepts and continue to explore numbers and patterns.

Dates to Remember Wednesday, March 7th

Field Trip to see the 5th-8th grade play King Arthur

at the Dairy Center

Friday, March 9thHalf Day for teacher in service

11 am dismissal

Junior Passport ProgramThis week Koben’s grandmother joined us for the passport program. Several years ago she traveled to Antarctica and had a plethora of knowledge, photos, and experience to share with our class! She shared maps and talked to students about where Antarctica was and how she got there by a combination of plane rides and a ship called the Explorer that sank 3 years after she was on it. On the ship with her were scientists conducting research who taught her an incredible amount about Antarctica.  She explained the fragile ecosystem there and the many animals who inhabit Antarctica- especially the many types of penguins! She also explained the treaties which ensure that the Antarctic is a region not owned by any one country, but rather shared by all nations. She also told us about how difficult it is to map Antarctica because of the constantly changing landform as ice develops and melts. The students were fascinated by what she had to say and asked tons of great questions!