Hunting for Turkeys

Good Afternoon,

Today was full of fun and excitement as Thanksgiving Day gets closer and closer!  To get into the spirit, we went on a "Turkey Hunt" today!  Different colored turkeys, with sight words written on them were hidden around our room.  We had to search for the turkeys, read, and write our sight words onto our recording sheet.  We met our learning target:  I can read and write my sight words!

We also searched our Albuquerque the Turkey poem for sight words.  We highlighted words we know by sight on our white board, and then went back to our seats to make our own customized version, highlighting our own personal sight words that we know.  These poems will be coming home tomorrow in poem notebooks!

This afternoon we met with Mrs. Board for our last Art Adventure.  We discussed a piece of art that was uncovered from the city of Pompeii.  We learned about volcanoes, talked about the art, and discussed our upcoming field trip to the art museum.

In math this afternoon we worked on symmetry turkeys.  We painted one side of our paper, folded it together and SMOOSHED it-making the turkey's feathers!  What fun!  We discussed how when two sides match, they have symmetry. (Learning Target :))

During our calendar time we are working on generating and asking questions to the class.  The ability to ask questions is a life skill!  Madeline asked some great questions today-with awesome compliments to her classmates too!

Tomorrow we have some more turkey activities in store!  I can't wait!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Match the Picture

A busy day, but unfortunately, no pictures to share.

We put a new book into our book boxes, and colored the pictures so that our picture would match the words (one of our learning targets this week was I can understand how pictures and words in a story are related).

We added a new poem to our poem notebooks, so be sure to check that out over the weekend.

In math we solved number stories using our interactive whiteboard.

We also squeezed in some time to journal :)

Have a wonderful weekend!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

From Trees to Wood

Today we started our next science unit- Wood.  Students explored five different types of wood, basswood, pine, redwood, plywood, and particle board.  We briefly talked about how plywood and particleboard are made.  Here are some pictures of our exploring:

In math today we talked about a fancy word, estimation.  Estimation means a smart guess.  We estimated the number of cubes in a jar.

We had a wonderful day!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Word Families

Good Afternoon,

Today we learned about word families and developed an understanding that the words in word families rhyme!  We made a necklace about the -at family.

We used some of our amazing words in our writing and created an ocean scene using oil pastels.

We also practiced letter formation with the letter A,a.  Encourage your child to start all of their letters at the top.

Our teen number chains are hung!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

What, chunks???

Good Afternoon,

We started by learning about reading word chunks.  First response from kiddos, "eww..gross..chunks!" We talked about these three chunks today:

We worked on a new poem today, Ants Go Marching.  We searched for the letter A,a in the poem.

In journals we started the, "Whiz of Is." When students choose to write the word "is" in their journal, and it's written correctly, they can get a "Whiz of is" hat to wear.

This afternoon in math we modeled teen mumbers using paper chains.  Here we are putting chains together.  I will post another picture once they are hung from our ceiling.  They are going to look fantastic!

Have a wonderful evening!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

We have a full week of learning this week, so we hit the ground running today.

-We learned how to read the words have and is.  To learn each word, we follow four steps, first Mrs. Huettl will write the word and erase one letter, asking, "What's missing?".  Next we make the word using magnetic letters.  The third step is to write the word with your finger on the carpet or table, and finally, we write the word with our marker on a dry earse board.  These four steps help students to visualize the word and impact more areas of the brain.  This process is done during small group guided reading lessons.

-We listened to an informational book about the ocean.  We started to learn about different text features in non-fiction books, such as the glossary and index.

-We wrote in our journals and if we remebered to put spaces between our words independently, we got a sticker in our journal.

-We had SMART time today!  Have your child explain some of these pictures to you:

-In math we learned how to describe a teen number as "ten and some more" ex. 19 is ten and 9 more.  Ask your child to describe a teen number for you!

Have a wonderful evening!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

2 Days in 1

Good Afternoon,

My apologies for missing yesterday's post.  The good news is, I have double the info and pictures to share with you today!  Let's start with yesterday...

Yesterday we classified and categorized the machines from our story.  Check this out:

We also continued our work with nouns, this time focusing on nouns for things and places.

We practiced Read to Someone again, this time using our poem notebooks.  When it is our partners turn to read, we should have our book closed and be listening to our partner.

Today we met with our buddies.  We drew turkeys using our hands :)

We did some review in our literacy time, and worked on problem solving and number stories during math.

This afternoon Mrs. Huettl fixed our learning target wall.  I think this one can go down as a Pinterest fail.  By Thursday, all of my frames had fallen down and broke.  So, I went to paper and sorted out our targets by the days of the week, mostly to keep my own head on straight!

Here is our NEW and IMPROVED Learning Target Wall:

A sneak peek at Monday's targets:

Have a great weekend!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

What an exciting day today with lots of learning!

We made book pages about machines and used our amazing words in our writing!

We played a game where we traveled around the room and grouped ourselves into groups depending on the beginning sound of our picture card.

We practiced Read to Someone today.  We sit elbow-elbow, knee-knee, and take turns being a reader and being a teacher.

In math we practiced identifying tricky teen numbers.  We passed out number cards and worked together to line up in order.

This afternoon we celebrated Lydia's birthday.  Happy Birthday Lydia!!!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Learning Letter T,t

Good Afternoon,

Today we focused on learning targets:
I can make the letter T,t sound and I can find the letter T,t in words.

We searched for the letter T,t in our new poem:

We also worked on our fine motor skills and cut out lots of pretty tiny circles to make a bear for our poem.

During guided reading we focused on getting our mouths ready for the first sound, and using the picture as a clue for tricky words.

We had a guest teacher this afternoon.  Mrs. Huettl was at a reading assessment meeting at the high school.

See you in the morning!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Learning Targets

Good Afternoon,

Friday, staff had a very productive day learning more about the Common Core State Standards and developing Learning Targets.  Each week, students will be given Learning Targets, these are kid friendly "I can.." statements so that students are aware of what they are learning!  Our Learning Targets are posted on our new "Learning Target" wall and will also be in the "I can..." section of our newsletter.

This morning we discussed with a partner our new amazing words.  Before deciding on each word's meaning, students debated about which picture matched each word.  Students did a great job supporting their answer with reasoning and evidence.

We put together a number board with stickers today.  We were quick to pick up on the pattern, and commented on how the stickers form a stair shape.  One of our I can.. statements today was, "I can use stickers to show numbers 1-10."

Tomorrow we will use the "spaceman" in our journals.  Today we had a brief introduction to the spaceman and what his job is in our writing.  If your child comes home with a little smiely face on his or her finger, it's just the spaceman :).

Amelia's mom came for another Art Adventure.  Only one more piece of art left!  We will be going to the Minneapolis Institute of Art on January 3rd, after returning from winter break.

Have a great evening!  I'm looking forward to meeting with many of you tonight!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl