Happy Spring!

The students have been learning about different kinds of weather through non-fiction books we have been reading during Reader’s Workshop.  We listened to “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” on tape, read many non-fiction books about weather and learned about weather idioms in our Scholastic News.  Starting this week we will be reading books about health and nutrition.  Every Tuesday for 5 weeks a speaker will be visiting us from Waupaca County to talk about making healthy food choices.  She will be teaching the students about the new food pyramid and different food groups. 

During math we have been visiting www.thatquiz.org to practice counting coins.  We are continuing to practice counting coins and telling time this week.  Check out www.thatquiz.com to practice many different math skills! This week we also tried www.ixl.com.  This site has math concepts organized by grade level. 

Our reading incentive will be coming up next week!! Will you make it???

Glogster

Over the last 2 weeks the students have been learning and researching about presidents.  The students worked in pairs to research a president on www.classroomhelp.com.  The students recorded their new learning so that they could make a poster on www.glogster.com.  Last week the students were introduced to this website and will be creating a new glog about their president during social studies this week.  If all of this talk about glogs is making your head spin try visiting the site with your student.  They each have a login for the site that I would be happy to share with you.  The students glogs will be printed off and hung on the very large timeline hanging on the wall by the 2nd grade stairwell. 
We are also finishing up a writing unit about poetry.  The students wrote a silly scramble, diamante, haiku and a sense poem.  The students picked their favorite to publish last week.  The students typed their poems on Microsoft Word, used spell check to edit their poem, changed the font and added clipart! We printed the poems today and they will be made into a classroom book for all of us to enjoy!

The students were very busy practicing their addition facts all month long.  We've learned many strategies to help students increase their fact speed.  The students took a pre-test and a post test and ALL the students improved. The class agreed at the beginning of the month that if all of the students improved we would celebrate by having a sledding party down the big hill on the playground.  Depending on the weather and snow coverage we'll be doing that sometime during the school day this week!  Great job boys and girls!