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!