November 12th-16th

Happy Friday!  We had an awesome week with having two field trips!  The kids always love getting to ride the school bus. 😊  Thanks to our parent chaperones for coming with us.  We will have two more field trips this year...Discovery Place and Gem Mining!  We are excited to celebrate Thanksgiving next week and talk about all of the things we are thankful for.

We are planning on having a Thanksgiving Feast for the kids on Tuesday so no need to send in lunch on that day.  The menu will consist of mac and cheese, green beans, corn, cornbread, and homemade butter (that we are going to make from heavy whipping cream in class)!

November 21st - 23rd: No school...Happy Thanksgiving!
December 20th - January 2nd: No school...Winter Break
January 17th 10:00 AM: American Heroes Play

Math:
Our math time was shortened this week due to our two field trips but we still got some place value practice in!  Students are improving in their ability to express numbers as tens and ones.  We are playing many place value games to practice this skill.

Literacy:
Students are doing great with our word study program!  They are learning new rules each week so they can apply them when writing during Daily 5.  After winter break, we will increase to 10 words each week instead of 5.  It will be even more important then to have your child write their words in the "best" column and practice the words doing fun activities.

Thematic:
We studied Mia Hamm and soccer this week during thematic centers.  We learned about the rules of soccer, who Mia Hamm is, and got to hear from the FSU girl's soccer team captain!  The students loved hearing her talk about her experience playing for Florida State and also professionally for a year.  Thank you Melissa Rieser for coordinating this! We learned that soccer balls have both hexagons and pentagons and students created their own paper plate soccer ball by tracing and cutting out these shapes.  We also made our own life-size soccer players!  Students got to create a team name and logo/mascot.  They turned out really well!

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James

November 5th-9th

Good afternoon!  I hope everyone is staying warm and dry today!  We are currently having indoor recess and the kids are playing "Four Corners" which they LOVE! 😆  We had a great week and as I make my lesson plans for next week, I realize we are going to have a very busy week!  

November 12th Hurricane Make Up Day and Veteran's Day Celebration 

November 13th Laurel's Nursing Home 10:30-11:30 AM: Parents are welcome to join us!  You may ride the bus or meet us there.  I will add this on our Sign Up Genius for the week.  We load the bus at CSD at 10:00 AM and the program is from 10:30-11:30 AM and we return to CSD by 12:00 PM. 

November 14th Charlotte Children's Theater Field Trip: Please have your child to school by 8:00 am on this day.  The bus will leaving CSD at 8:30 am sharp.  We will eat lunch when we return to school so send a normal lunch.  Please feed your child a big, protein-rich breakfast that will keep them full until lunch.

***I will be sending play lines home for the American Heroes play within the next two weeks.  Just an FYI. 

Math:

As we dive into our cluster 3 in math, students are learning how to apply their learning of place value in many different ways.  They learned two math games this week to practice this skill and demonstrate their knowledge.  The first one is called Ten Frames (11-19) and work on the student picking a number (11-19), building it on two tens frames using cubes, and then writing how many tens/ones they have and the corresponding equation.  We want them transitioning to seeing numbers as tens and ones.  We will continue to build on this knowledge and soon move into 20+ numbers where the students will have to work with more than one "ten."  

Literacy:

Students continue to work hard during Daily 5 rotations and have the freedom to move from station to station within our one hour literacy block.  We have different "word work" activities for them to do to practice their word study words.  This past week we had whiteboards, rainbow word writing, word searches, and stamping.  Students are making great progress with their guided reading books and that makes me so happy! Keep having your child read those to you Tuesday-Friday.  Repetition with them is key in developing many crucial skills. 

Thematic:

We studied Jackie Robinson and baseball this week during our thematic unit time.  BIG thank you to Andy Cook (Laine's dad) for coming in to talk to us about baseball and his time playing baseball professionally.  The kids loved having him here and were so excited that they each got one of his baseball cards. We started learning our "Break the Barrier" song that we will perform at our American Heroes play in January.  We spent time reading and learning about Jackie Robinson and all of the things he had to overcome in his baseball career.  The kids favorite center was making a baseball necklace out of a washer!  They had to also write three facts they learned about baseball.  I am turning it into a book that will travel home with different students each night.   Next week we are studying soccer and Mia Hamm and will have another guest speaker from FSU's girl soccer team (thank you Melissa Rieser for the connection)!  

Love,

Mrs. James

October 29th - November 2nd

Happy Friday! We all survived the two days after Halloween. 😜 Surprisingly, yesterday and today have been great in our classroom which I did not expect to happen.  We had a busy but fun week with celebrating Halloween, beginning a new math cluster, learning about Wilma Rudolph, and completing week two of word sorts!

Laurel Nursing Home Dates 10:30-11:30 AM: Below are the four dates that we will go to the Laurel's Nursing Home if you want to put them on your calendar.  Parents are welcome to join us!  You may ride the bus or meet us there.  We load the bus at CSD at 10:00 AM and the program is from 10:30-11:30 AM and we return to CSD by 12:00 PM.  

• Tuesday, November 13th
• Tuesday, January 8th
• Tuesday, March 12th
• Tuesday, May 7th

November 12th Hurricane Make Up Day and Veteran's Day Celebration 

November 14th Charlotte Children's Theater Field Trip: Please have your child to school by 8:00 am on this day.  The bus will leaving CSD at 8:30 am sharp.  We will eat lunch when we return to school so send a normal lunch.  We will not have time for a morning snack so please feed your child a big breakfast to keep them full until lunch.

Math:

We officially began Cluster 3 this week which is all about "place value."  As students work with two-digit numbers, they learn that the digits represent amounts of tens and ones.  Then they use that knowledge to compare numbers to see which are less than, equal to, or greater than other numbers.  In this cluster, students will learn to count up from any given start number within 150. Students will learn to group objects by tens and left-overs as an efficient way to count larger groups of objects.  They will write down the number of groups of tens and ones as well as the total number of objects.  A variety of objects will be used for counting but we will mainly use unifix cubes.  Students will also learn to count items in a picture by circling groups of tens to help find the total.  This understanding of place value is foundational as students build fluency with addition and subtraction. 

Literacy:

Students did awesome on our second week of word sorts!  They have actually learned to love them and find them fun and challenging. 😊  Before the students are sent to Daily 5, I teach a mini-lesson that involves a reading strategy.  This week we focused on the idea of "Juggling All Three Balls."  Reader's don't only do one thing when we get to a word. We need to do at least three: (1) think about what makes sense; (2) think about how a book sounds; and (3) think about what looks right.  This is a great thing to encourage your child to do while reading at home!

Thematic:

We continued learning about Wilma Rudolph this week as we begin our American Heroes and Famous Athletes unit. Next week, we will move onto Jackie Robinson.  The other athletes we will learn about are Mia Hamm, Michael Jordan, and Michelle Kwan.  We learned about Venn diagrams and how to use them to compare and contrast things or people.  Students created a Venn diagram comparing themselves to Wilma Rudolph.  Students thought about ways they are different than Wilma and the same as Wilma.  Students also got to complete an obstacle course that I created that involved sprinting, jumping sides, and side shuffling.  They got to run the course three times to see if they could improve their time.  They loved this activity! 

Have a great weekend!

Love,

Mrs. James