Flag, writing conferences & so much more!

I can't believe this is the last week of 1st quarter and it is almost November!! Where has the year gone so far! We had another busy week trying to wrap up the quarter and we got a lot accomplished. Take a look below at what we did this week.

We are continuing to develop our calendar/ morning meeting skills. Each day we have our friend who was chosen as the "treasure counter" from the previous day be our secret spy and choose a treasure counter for that day. In order to be chosen they need to be looking at the number line, pointing to the numbers and counting with us how many days we have been in school. This person gets to write the number on our number card and are also our "weather watcher" who records what the weather is for the day on our chart. We have also continued to discuss how many days we have been in school and what that equals in money. We have started doing the Pledge of Allegiance in the mornings as well. More about this below.

In order to get our portfolios ready for conferences and allow the kids to have more ownership over their work, we made covers for them. We wrote our names and they really took their time shading to make it look nice.

During our writing period the kids have been conferencing with a partner. This has helped them to gain insight on their strengths and needs in their own writing as well as give the same suggestions to their partners. They tell their partner two stars and a wish about their story. Two stars are two things that they enjoyed about their partners writing skill and their wish is something that they want their partner to do in their writing. After they do this we choose a couple groups to share their two stars and a wish about their partners story with the class. Then they have the opportunity to work on their writing and add the suggestions their friend gave them.

Since we have started doing the Pledge of Allegiance, the kids have noticed that we don't have a flag in our classroom. They decided that we needed to change that and wanted to make their own! We looked at pictures of the flag to figure out what colors we needed and how we would go about doing this. They started by ripping red, white and blue construction paper. We then figured out how many lines we needed, what color they should be and about how big the blue box should be and we outlined it in pencil on our paper. Below are some pictures of me modeling how to put the right amount of glue on their papers and glue it on our flag. Each child then got a turn to come up and try it. There is a picture below of what we have done so far. We have a lot of work still left to do but we have gotten a pretty good start and it is going to look really great when we are done! 

We also finished our Green and Orange color mosaics this week! We just have to make the label for Orange. We still have to make the mosaics for purple, brown, black, white and pink! They are turning out awesome so far!

 

In order to tie up the quarter we also worked on some things that many of our kids were struggling with. We practiced counting syllables in words by putting our hand under our chin and each time your chin moves that is a syllable. We also practiced counting, recognizing and drawing shapes and writing numbers.


Have a great week and don't forget our student-led conferences are November 6th, 7th & 8th. Look for a paper this week to come home with the time and date of your child's conference!
Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant