Week 8

Week 8 (October 6 - October 10)

“Our children will mirror us on how they view themselves” 

–unknown

It is so important that we instill in our children the confidence that they need to succeed. I make it a priority to encourage each of my students daily. The smallest compliments or show of gratification can make the world of a difference to a child. I’m sure that you’re already encouraging your child in many ways, but I challenge you to compliment your child each day, and watch the confidence in them bloom!

Hispanic Heritage Month

This week the students and I took the time to research a Hispanic person of our choice. We researched all week and then finally presented our person to the class on Friday. There were wonderful conversations about how they didn’t know of these people even though they had done great things; conversations on what it means to be Hispanic and how being Mexican and Hispanic were two totally different things. Here is a quick look at the individuals who were chosen.

Math

Engage NY has been very helpful with enhancing the students’ understanding of adding and subtracting within 20. We are continuing to use whole group, workshop, and many many math games to enhance our learning as well. Word problems have continued to be a hurdle for us, but with time and practice, I can see us overcoming that hurdle soon.

ELA

We just finished reading Family Farms, which was a great insight into a rural community from the past and comparing it to a rural community of today. This week we will be moving on to a nonfiction text entitled Life in the Desert. We will use this to discuss nonfiction features and build on the concept of author’s purpose.

In writing we are still working on complete and incomplete sentences, capitulation, and punctuation. We began talking about ways to grow our ideas for writing as well.

Social Studies

For the past week and a half the students have been creating their own towns. They’ve been working in groups of 4 to create a name for their town, deciding what they want in their town (school, banks, food, parks, etc.), and creating a map to display their town. We will finish these maps this Monday and Tuesday and then present them on Wednesday.

I’m so excited to see what this 3-day week holds for the students and I. There is never a dull moment in our classroom and I’m always surprised to hear the wonderful thoughts and ideas of the students. Cheers to another great week!