On Monday, October 30th we celebrated G1 October birthdays. We ate cake and made balloon animals. It was a lot of fun!
On Tuesday UST celebrated Halloween. With the help of our PTA, students walked in a parade and went trick-or-treating. We ended at the park for a UST school photo. G1 and G2 students also participated in different Halloween activities in the G1 and G2 classrooms.
During Reading this week we focused on making connections. Students learned that readers can make connections to what they read by thinking about how a book is similar to their own life experiences (text-to-self connection). They can also think about how a book reminds them of another book (text-to-text connection.)
Before fall break, our class started a new unit in Writing called Sentences and Paragraphs. This week we reviewed the parts of a sentence. Students practiced writing sentences that have words in the correct order. They also worked on identifying the naming and telling parts of sentences.
This week we completed another chapter in Math. This chapter focused on subtraction facts to 10. Students were introduced to fact families before fall break and are beginning to use related addition and subtraction facts to help solve problems.
Examples:
Our new unit is Science is called Technology All Around Us. Students are exploring how engineers work and learning the steps in the design process. This week our class worked on a project called Don't Crack Up!
Problem: Can you make a landing pad that will keep a dropped egg from cracking?
Materials: felt, pillow stuffing, foam, cardboard, cardboard tubes, brown paper bags, tape, hard-boiled egg
Design Process
1. Find a Problem
2. Plan and Build
3. Test and Improve
4. Redesign
5. Communicate
Students worked in groups to follow the design process and create a landing pad. On Friday we tested the landing pads with hard-boiled eggs. Afterwards, students wrote about what happened during the test and recorded ideas about how to make their designs better.
- Ms. Allison