Alhamdullilah for a successful first week of school. We were able to fit in many beginning of the year activities and learn new concepts as well.
I read students a story called, "First Day Jitters." It is about the character being very nervous for the first day of school, until she actually gets there and sees that it will be just fine. The twist is that the character ends up being the teacher! You don't see the character's face throughout the story, so you just assume it is a child! Afterwards, we all talked about our possible first day of school jitters. Many of them said that they were just fine and weren't nervous at all! How great! But justttt in case, I made a special drink called "JITTER JUICE." Students labeled their cups with the title and then got to drink the juice! Of course, as taste buds differ, not everyone liked it. So we incorporated math and made a bar graph and tally graph to talk about how many did like it and how many didn't.
They heard another story called, "Chrysanthemum," by Kevin Henkes. This story reinforced the concept of treating each other with kindness and not bullying anyone. In the story, students were making fun of Chrysanthemum's name. Every time someone made fun of her, students crumpled a tissue paper heart that I had cut out. By the end of the story, the heart was all crumpled. We tried to straighten it out, but even though it was whole again, it was still wrinkled. This helped us understand that when we hurt each other's feelings, it can leave the heart sad for a long time.
Throughout the week, students did a few other writing assignments which I will use for beginning of the year writing samples. They did a craft project called, "School is Cool Because..." They made a smily face with sunglasses attached. The smily face had a speaking bubble attached to it, and inside students wrote the reasons they think school is cool.
They heard a story called Miss Nelson is Missing. Students in the story were not listening to their nice teacher, so she disappeared and a mean teacher appeared. She was so strict, that the kids learned to not take advantage of their teacher who treated them kindly. Afterwards, they wrote a short story called, "Sr. Amna is Missing."
Math
During math time, we had a lot of fun this week! First they learned about even and odd numbers. I introduced them to two new members of our class named Odd Todd and Even Steven. Even Steven liked the even numbers (0,2,4,6,8), and Odd Todd liked the odd numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9). Students got together with a partner and received a paper plate with a bunch of Skittles. They had to count out the skittles and tell me if the total number was odd or even. I wrote it on the plate. Then they split the Skittles evenly. If they had an odd number, they had to leave one out when they split it. If they were correct, they got to eat all their candy! (Everyone was correct and). :) Afterwards, we split the paper plates between Odd Todd and Even Steven. If the number on the plate was odd, it went to Todd's team, and vice versa for even numbers.
They also worked on understanding place value with tens and ones. They had to draw out tens and ones and also practice expanded form. Expanded form is when we stretch out the number. For example, 34 is actually 3 tens and 4 ones, so it is 30 plus 4.
Science
Chapter 1 is about the needs of living and non living things. Living things need food, water, oxygen, and shelter to survive. Survive means to stay alive. We created gestures with our body to remember the definitions and information in the lessons we read. At the end of the week, students got together in groups and used old magazines to cut out pictures of living and nonliving and sort them into a collage poster.
By the way, if you have old magazines that are classroom appropriate, please send them in!! :)
Hope you enjoyed reading about your child's classroom adventures!
-Sr. Amna-
I read students a story called, "First Day Jitters." It is about the character being very nervous for the first day of school, until she actually gets there and sees that it will be just fine. The twist is that the character ends up being the teacher! You don't see the character's face throughout the story, so you just assume it is a child! Afterwards, we all talked about our possible first day of school jitters. Many of them said that they were just fine and weren't nervous at all! How great! But justttt in case, I made a special drink called "JITTER JUICE." Students labeled their cups with the title and then got to drink the juice! Of course, as taste buds differ, not everyone liked it. So we incorporated math and made a bar graph and tally graph to talk about how many did like it and how many didn't.
They heard another story called, "Chrysanthemum," by Kevin Henkes. This story reinforced the concept of treating each other with kindness and not bullying anyone. In the story, students were making fun of Chrysanthemum's name. Every time someone made fun of her, students crumpled a tissue paper heart that I had cut out. By the end of the story, the heart was all crumpled. We tried to straighten it out, but even though it was whole again, it was still wrinkled. This helped us understand that when we hurt each other's feelings, it can leave the heart sad for a long time.
Throughout the week, students did a few other writing assignments which I will use for beginning of the year writing samples. They did a craft project called, "School is Cool Because..." They made a smily face with sunglasses attached. The smily face had a speaking bubble attached to it, and inside students wrote the reasons they think school is cool.
They heard a story called Miss Nelson is Missing. Students in the story were not listening to their nice teacher, so she disappeared and a mean teacher appeared. She was so strict, that the kids learned to not take advantage of their teacher who treated them kindly. Afterwards, they wrote a short story called, "Sr. Amna is Missing."
Math
During math time, we had a lot of fun this week! First they learned about even and odd numbers. I introduced them to two new members of our class named Odd Todd and Even Steven. Even Steven liked the even numbers (0,2,4,6,8), and Odd Todd liked the odd numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9). Students got together with a partner and received a paper plate with a bunch of Skittles. They had to count out the skittles and tell me if the total number was odd or even. I wrote it on the plate. Then they split the Skittles evenly. If they had an odd number, they had to leave one out when they split it. If they were correct, they got to eat all their candy! (Everyone was correct and). :) Afterwards, we split the paper plates between Odd Todd and Even Steven. If the number on the plate was odd, it went to Todd's team, and vice versa for even numbers.
They also worked on understanding place value with tens and ones. They had to draw out tens and ones and also practice expanded form. Expanded form is when we stretch out the number. For example, 34 is actually 3 tens and 4 ones, so it is 30 plus 4.
Science
Chapter 1 is about the needs of living and non living things. Living things need food, water, oxygen, and shelter to survive. Survive means to stay alive. We created gestures with our body to remember the definitions and information in the lessons we read. At the end of the week, students got together in groups and used old magazines to cut out pictures of living and nonliving and sort them into a collage poster.
By the way, if you have old magazines that are classroom appropriate, please send them in!! :)
Hope you enjoyed reading about your child's classroom adventures!
-Sr. Amna-