Fill Someone's Bucket

Last month we read the book titled, Have You Filled a Bucket Today?  The idea is that everyone carries around an invisible bucket that holds good thoughts about themselves.  When we show others that we care, we fill their bucket.  When we do so, we feel also feel good, and therefore fill our own bucket.  Showing people you care can be as simple as saying hello.  It can be making a card or saying "I like the way you play basketball."  The possibilities are endless.  We also talked about how people sometimes dip into someone's bucket by calling them names or ignoring them.  We decided as a class we want to be "bucket fillers" and not "bucket dippers."  Students are encouraged to "fill someone's bucket" throughout the day by writing a message to a someone on a raindrop in our classroom bucket.

Literacy Kits and Take Home Books

We will begin our Take Home Book Program and Weekend Literacy Kits in January.

Take Home Book Program

Beginning the second week of January, your student will receive a take home book each Monday, along with a class response journal. This will be part of their weekly homework.  The aim of this program is to support family literacy and develop reading comprehension. By reading aloud and with your children, you are helping them in significant ways.

-When you hold them and give them your attention, they know you love them.

-Reading to them will encourage them to read.

-Books are one way of passing on your moral values to your children. Readers know how to put themselves in another's shoes.

-When students are exposed to stories of multiple reading levels they gain a stronger understanding of story structure and language.

-Exposure to lots of literature builds their vocabulary and decoding skills. Most importantly, it helps them build positive associations with reading. 

Please carefully read the introduction letter that will go home with the first book bag so you know how to make the most of the book bags and help your child complete the assignment.  Please also remember to include the time spent reading these books into your child's monthly reading log.

Optional Weekend Literacy Kits

We are also beginning our Weekend Literacy Kit program in January.  You may remember signing up for this program at Back-to-School Night.  You see when your child is scheduled for a kit at the classroom website.*  This optional program allows students to take home a themed kit packed with quality books and family activities.  The goal of this program is to promote literacy as a fun family activity.  Your child will receive their kit on his/her scheduled Thursday and return it the following Monday.  Please help ensure that all the contents are returned to the kit in good quality so the next family may enjoy them.

*If you are scheduled to get the "Under the Sea" kit, please consider picking your child up in a car that day, as the kit is a bit cumbersome and may be difficult to walk home with.

Writing

Students have begun to write in their school journals more.  At this point in the year, students are learning to write using inventive spelling.  Students are encouraged to just write the sounds that they hear in the words. Research shows that this is a developmental stage in writing which helps students learn to read and write independently.  At this stage in their writing, it is okay that they do not spell words correctly.  It is important to allow them to experiment with the sounds in words to learn to read and write.  We only want to hold them accountable for what they have learned so they feel empowered and not overwhelmed when writing.  The English language has so many rules and exceptions to rules in spelling that they will learn as it becomes more developmentally appropriate.  You can help by encouraging them to write notes, letters, lists, and stories at home. They might even be motivated to keep their own at home journal.  At this point, the letters that students should be able to recognize and tell you the sound for are s, m, r, t, b, n, h, a, v, and c.  Please let me know if you have any questions about inventive spelling.
 

Math Update

Along with exploring shapes, students explored sorting and patterning in December.   The objectives were...


-To sort objects by size, shape, and color.
-To determine their own way to sort objects and explain how they sorted them.
-To identify a pattern and extend a pattern.
-To create their own pattern.
-To translate a pattern (ex: red, red, blue, red, red, blue------> A, A, B, A, A, B).

You can continue their learning at home by encouraging them to sort socks, coins, or toys and making patterns out of them.

We also continue to explore numbers 0-10 with various hands-on Marcy Cook games in which they have to order numbers, play logic games, and find numbers on a 1-30 chart.  Please continue to practice these numbers at home. Students can count items around home to continue to strengthen this skill.

Paul Klee and Eric Carle Art

Students examined the contrasting colors of Paul Klee's Golden Fish.  They then used crayon resist along with Eric Carle's techniques of creating textured papers and collages to recreate their own Paul Klee art.

Here is Paul Klee's Golden Fish.

Here are some student re-imaginations.

Eric Carle Unit

Before break, we finished our Eric Carle unit in language arts. Through this unit, students learned...

-Authors and illustrators are real people who often draw inspiration from daily life.

-About the process that authors and illustrators go through to publish a book.

-The reading comprehension strategy of Questioning.  We created “I wonder” statements as we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Mister Seahorse. “I wonder” statements are a starting point for asking meaningful questions as we read. Readers who ask questions are not only more engaged as they read, they also form more meaning as they strive to find answers to their own questions.

-The reading comprehension strategy of Retelling/Summarizing.   As we read Papa, Please Get the Moon For Me, we talked about how good readers stop during their reading to reflect on what has already happened and make predictions, so they better remember the story.  We also talked of the importance of retelling stories in our culture.

-The reading comprehension strategy of Schema.  Good readers draw on background knowledge to better understand the story.  For this strategy, we used the book Pancakes, Pancakes.  However, before we read, we made pancakes in the Discovery Room from scratch.  This helped students build their schema so when we read Pancakes, Pancakes we were able to make real world connections and better understand the reading.

Integrating art into this unit was easy, as Eric Carle is renown for his artwork.  We watched a video on Eric Carle's technique of making textured paper and collages.  Inspired by Eric Carle, we made our own collages to create our own version of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?  Below are some excerpts from our class book.

Ms. Patel's Second Solo Week

Ms. Patel successfully completed her second solo week in November.  During her second solo week, Ms. Patel...

-Reviewed previously taught consonants with students through various games and practice lessons.

-Developed student's self-esteem with an "I Like Me" unit.  

-Taught students to identify and tell about the following shapes: rectangle, square, triangle, and circle.  Students compared and contrasted shapes and told the characteristics needed for a shape to be classified as a rectangle, square, triangle, or circle.  They concluded the week by making "Shape Monsters."

During this time, Ms. Patel was also busy finishing up her classes at SJSU.  She has now earned her credential and we wish her the best in her future as a teacher.  She hopes to visit the classroom a few times before the school year is over.