February News




























   February Notes

   This is Black History Month. Students continue to learn about leaders in civil rights and important figures such as Harriet Tubman who fought, i.e., against the injustice of slavery and other Americans who continued through the ensuing centuries and continue to pursue basic human rights and justice for all Americans.
  Ms. J.-R. is reading the biography of Harriet Tubman to the class. During afternoon reading blocks students are reading biographies themselves and are writing reports on the subjects of their respective books. Children have learned about the kind of information that is typically included in biographies, and the way a biography is organized, and what special features (i.e., timelines, photographs, bibliography) are found in most biographies.
  This month, we did a classroom art project that involved mixing shaving cream and Elmer’s glue and applying it to 12”X18” blue construction paper to create the shape of a snowman. After the mixture dried, students added bits of felt, ribbon, paper, and other materials to create a partially three-dimensional figure. As a writing follow-up, students wrote cinquains about their snow figures. The snowmen were displayed in the hallway along with fanciful writings about
“What I would do on my best winter day…” attached to a decorated paper mug appearing to hold hot chocolate with real marshmallows glued on top…
   Students are memorizing “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost.
   Students from UNE came to the class and presented a power point on how to take care of your teeth in recognition of Dental Health Month.
   Students are learning strategies to add double-digit numbers without being taught the re-grouping algorithm just yet. For example, they are learning to add all the tens by using an open number line, and lastly adding up the ones on the number line. Real, picture, and simple symbolic bar graphs are under discussion and use. Students are employing start/change/end and part/part/total organizers to solve computation problems.
   On February 11, students exchanged valentines in the morning and in the afternoon parents and other family members came to the long-awaited book share for the World Culture and Traditions handmade book. It was lovely to finally show parents the beautiful books and for students to have the opportunity to finally share with them all they had learned about selected countries over the past several months!