Welcome back from break! We had a great first 3 days back last week, kicking off new units in reading, writing, and inquiry. Here’s an update of what we’re learning and doing in class:

Literacy:

In reading we have begun a unit on nonfiction reading skills. We will focus on skills that will help us as we read increasingly complex nonfiction texts. For the first few weeks, all students will be reading texts that support our unit on energy. Students can choose between nonfiction and fiction books for home reading.

In writing, we are wrapping up our unit on narrative. Students have written many seed ideas, and learned strategies for generating story ideas. They then chose a personally powerful seed to draft and evolve. Most students have reached the stage of having a “Frankenstein story”, built of bits and pieces of multiple drafts and revisions. We celebrated this work by sharing it with our class and our grade one buddies before the break. Next, we will begin a unit on research reports. During that unit, students will write reports on energy — first an “all about energy” report, and then later, researching one particular source of energy and the impact of our energy use on the environment.

Math:

Students will learn about division this week. They will learn a few ways to model division and the partial quotients algorithm. This algorithm builds conceptual understanding of division. Please ask your child to show you how to divide this way sometime later in the week. Toward the end of the week, students will be assessed on their understanding of the four operations. Our next unit (on fractions) will begin next week.

Unit:

Last week, we kicked off our energy unit. Each child visited four different classrooms to see four different energy demonstrations. The kids got really excited about these. It was a lot of fun for all of us. This week, we will begin learning about the different types of energy. On Thursday, students will make their own energy demonstrations.

On Friday, we celebrated our community and our first week back with a team-building hike upstream, and up the “waterfalls” in the woods. Thank you for sending in rain boots and jackets… It got wet 🙂 Enjoy a few photos of the event.