It has been a delight to stand in for Ben while he is on
paternity leave. We have launched a study of holiday traditions in various
cultures, and have read several books on that topic. Thanks to all you families
for helping your child complete the holiday traditions interview form. Now that
they are all returned to school, we can begin to use them as the basis for
writing a report.
We
have been talking about writing to inform, and are learning to use a tool
called the Painted Essay. It is a way of learning the parts of a report
(Introduction, Point One, Point Two, Conclusion) and to help us understand and
remember those parts by associating each with a color. First we read about each
part and colored the template with colored pencils. Today, we will actually
paint another graphic organizer with watercolors. Next week, we will finalize
our report topics and we’ll use planning sheets with those four colored blocks
to write notes in each part.
The
first graders have been practicing making ten with the rods, adding numbers
plus one and numbers plus ten, and using number lines for addition. We gave a
short quiz on the plus one and plus ten facts yesterday. I plan to send a
practice page home with some of the first graders who need to practice adding
ten to a number. The second grade math notes can be found by going to Theresa
Fox’s blog: http://mstheresa-rumney.blogspot.com/p/math.html
