Molly's Pilgrim

We recently enjoyed the book Molly’s Pilgrim, by Barbara Cohen, as a whole class shared book experience. Prior to reading, all students recorded their ideas of what a Pilgrim was. I read the text aloud while students followed along. We stopped throughout reading to “turn and talk” to partners about reactions, connections and theories of this book. We also took many “stop and jots”. After reading, we realized that our thinking had changed about what a Pilgrim was. We focused on character traits again and supported our thinking with examples from the text. In addition, we made a story map and discussed the author's "big idea". Please engage your child in a conversation as a follow up to this experience. We filed our Molly's Pilgrim book packets in our Reader's Notebooks. We made clothespin dolls as a culminating activity based on the book. We also delighted in watching Molly's Pilgrim as a movie and compared the movie to the book.

Check out a Turkey Thesaurus!

We used a thesaurus for the first time. Make sure you ask your child what the difference is between a dictionary and a thesaurus. Each student was given a simple, overused word such as "said" and he/she needed to find at least 7 other words with similar meaning. We looked up the word in alphabetical order in the thesaurus or used the computer and recorded our words on an index card. Next, we created a turkey to display our work. We wrote each word on a turkey feather and shared them with our class. This will help us with our writing in the future to choose "WOW" words

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Writing Update

Writer's Notebooks

Our morning work each Monday is journaling in our Writer’s Notebook about our weekends or important events in our lives. The children choose a topic of significance to them. Some students have written expert lists of topics they know a lot about, poetry or step by step how to articles. Please take some time each weekend to discuss some possible topics for your child to write about so he/she comes ready to write on Monday. This is a great way for me to hear about their lives and interests. The students enjoy sharing these entries with friends and editing each other's work. 

Writing Celebration

The students have worked diligently on publishing their personal narrative writing pieces. We discussed a personal narrative as a “memory” or “snapshot” of an event in our lives. We made webs of our memories in our Writer’s Notebook and shared them with our talk partners. We then chose the one we wanted to write about and made a mind map of our ideas. We looked at the who (characters), when, where (setting) and what (plot) of our stories/experiences and then focused on a powerful beginning and ending. Our class had a wonderful writing celebration this week as a culmination of our hard work. This is a time where our classmates read our writing pieces and we share comments with each other.

Lastly, we made a toast to good writing!

Buzzing About Bees

We have begun to study bees and the important part they play in the pollination of our plants. We started with “What do we Know About Bees and “What are we Wondering About Bees”. This gave us a good basis to work from and see how much prior knowledge we possessed. I then had the students illustrate what they think a bee looks like on half a sheet of paper. At the end of our unit, the students will be asked to draw another picture of a bee and include all that they learned. We can then put the two sketches together and visually assess how much information was learned. 

We observed real bees this past week and identified the different parts of the bee’s body. Then we made bee sticks to pollinate our plants. It is really neat because you can actually see the pollen stick to the bee’s body. We have read many books on Honeybees. Ask your child about some of the interesting facts we learned. We will observe the changes in our flowers as we cross-pollinate and you may even be able to see the pods on our plants.

Halloween Highlights

Halloween was lots of fun! The students loved dressing up in their costumes and having a pizza party in our classroom. Thank you to all of the families who donated treats to make this such a special day. We especially loved The Haunted Gym and the Halloween activities with our third grade friends. We played Halloween Bingo with candy corns, danced to the Monster Mash, made tootsie roll ghost pops and enjoyed a Halloween book and song.

 

Our seeds are planted!

Science

We began our first science unit called Plants and Pollination a few weeks ago. Our “little scientists” have been very busy and actively engaged. We started by examining “What We Know About Plants” and “What We are Wondering About Plants”. We then made observations of a dried bean which we soaked overnight and observed what changes occurred the following day. This soaking allowed us to peel off the seed coat and see what was inside the seed. We then planted our Wisconsin Fast Plant seeds and put them under the lights. Ask your child about this process.

It has been very exciting to see the daily growth of our Wisconsin Fast Plants. We completed the process of thinning our plants to give them the best chance to grow. We have been recording the changes in size and the number of leaves. Then we make a detailed, labeled drawing in our books. We are learning the parts of the flower.

The Schwest Run

The Schwest Run was a huge success even though the weather was a little chilly! We all did our personal best and contributed to our healthy hearts.  What a fun afternoon cheering on our Westmere classmates and friends!