Weekly Update 5/9/14

This has been a busy week!   We started a new poetry unit and life cycles.   We also had a fabulous presentation today from the Museum of Science on life cycles.  The students loved it and the presenters had lots of information to share.
A few reminders:
*As the weather gets warmer, you may choose to put sunscreen or bug spray on your child before they leave in the morning.
*If you have any paper towels or a cleaning wipes container that's just laying around, please send it in!  *With the end of the year coming, we use quite a bit cleaning out lockers, student bins and cubbies, etc.
*Monday, May 26, there is no school for Memorial Day.

What's been happening in room 235?
In literacy, we've started doing some sight words and Fundations assessments to see student progress in reading the words.  Students are doing fabulous so far!  We will start the reading assessment, DRA's in the next few weeks.  It's wonderful to see all their progress.  All students have made progress this year!
We've been working on words with /ou/ and /ow/ in Fundations and will move on to the different /u/ sounds next week.   We started working on poetry this week and focused on what poetry sounds like, how to read poetry fluently, and choosing a line of poetry that speaks to them and illustrating that line.
We have been writing back to our pen pals and also have been writing opinion pieces about recess and the playground structure.  We even went outside at the end of the day to do our writing.  It was so nice to get out and just write in Kayla's garden at the tables.  Perfect place to end the day!
In math, we've been working on dollars and cents, place value, and learning how to think about the multiple ways to solve number sentences.  They know the answer often but explaining the answer and solving it a new way, only increases their math flexibility and understanding.
In science, we planted brassica plants and are waiting for them to grow!  We will be receiving butterfly eggs next week which will live on the plants and continue to grow.   We got off to a slow growing start for the plants, but now it looks like they're taking off so hopefully we'll be all set for the eggs.  Students love this time of year because they can see the eggs, the caterpillars, and later butterflies!