Friday, October 23, 2009

Fall Into Learning

Welcome to our class blog! Information about schoolwork, homework, and upcoming events will be posted for your reference. Mrs. Dantin encourages us to stay focused by snapping pictures of us as we work quietly. We all want our pictures posted on our class blog! As we work throughout the day, Mrs. Dantin gives us several opportunities to take part in activities as a whole class and within a small group. We also work with buddies and independently to complete many assignments. Look how hard we've been working:

We write in our journal each morning. This gives Mrs. Dantin a chance to conference with us about our writing progess every day!

Meagan's thoughtful journal entry about her favorite color.

After journals, we gather on the carpet to learn and practice reading skills. We work on blending and segmenting words to help us 'sound out' words we don't know. Mrs. Dantin also teaches us reading strategies to help us understand stories as we read. We end carpet time by reviewing our spelling words.

Now, it's time for literacy stations! We have 5 stations in our room: Mrs. Dantin's reading station, Ms. Allen's phonics station, a listening station, an independent reading station, and an independent exploration station. We rotate to each station Monday through Thursday for 20 minutes at a time:

Avery listening to a story on tape then completing a follow-up comprehension activity.

T'Marcio matching naming and action parts to create sentences at an independent exploration station.


Yolanda brainstorming for a spooky Halloween story with Mrs. Dantin.

Areesia identifying cause and effect relationships within a story with Mrs. Dantin.

Keshawn and Shemar identifying short vowel sounds at an independent exploration station.

Christian changing the beginning sounds of words to create rhyming lists at an independent exploration station.

MacKenzie creating rhyming word lists with Ms. Allen.

Now it's time for lunch and recess on the playground! We play as hard as we work!!

Fred racing down the slide.

When we return to our classroom, we work on our language arts, or english skills. We work hard to identify nouns and verbs, as well as, writing complete sentences. Right now we are working on the writing process (brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing) and using adjectives to describe nouns!

At the end of our day, we switch gears to focus on math! Mrs. Dantin always draws pictures, reads stories, and gives us different objects to use to help us understand math. Right now we are working on adding and subtracting numbers.

Micheal illustrating an addition problem.



Check back soon for next week's spelling words, the reading fair, Friday's PTA meeting, our week with adjectives, and Fall Festival!