I Wanna Iguana!

Dear Family,

Before the Thanksgiving break, Mrs. Maggart taught us all about the P.I.E. that authors use when they have a purpose for writing a book: persuade, inform, or entertain. This week, we read a very funny book about a boy who really, really wanted a pet iguana. He tried to persuade his mother to let him have fun by incorporating lots of facts and some very funny opinions into his letters addressed to his mom.

We decided that we would do a little research of our own to persuade Mrs. Snow to let our class have another class pet. We took a vote and a most of us voted to persuade Mrs. Snow to let us get a...hamster! We will be gathering resources and researching facts about hamsters as to why one would make a great pet. We can't wait to get started!

But how will we persuade her? Well, the character in our book gave us a very clever idea. We will write her a letter!

To help us do a very good job persuading her, we needed to learn more about letters. We learned what a letter is, who we can write letters to, and all of the different reasons why we could write letters.

We learned about the 5 parts of a friendly letter:

We read books about letters:

 

 

 

 

We really wanted to practice our letter writing skills so we thought about who we could write a special letter for. Who was someone whom we had a lot of questions for? What about the tooth fairy?! We brainstormed with our buddies about what we would ask/say to the tooth fairy if we ever met her (or him) and then we set to work. We made sure we had all 5 parts to our letter. We made sure we used our best handwriting so that she could read it. We made sure we used our dictionaries and writing folders to make sure our words were spelled correctly.

 



 

 

Finally, to add something special, we created a tooth fairy based on what we thought she might look like. When we lose our next wiggly tooth, we will put our letters under our pillow for her!

We have been working very hard on our Word Study (or spelling) words. We have been playing games and practicing our words with a buddy.

 

In our reading groups, we are focusing on our metacognition: thinking about our thinking while we are reading. We are practicing using these stems: 

We are also continuing to make connections: text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self. We are working on retelling stories after we read them, using vocabulary and details.

In Math, we have begun our patterns unit. We already know about making patterns with objects and colors: now we are working on patterns with numbers. We got to explore with a new math tool: cuisenaire rods.

We soon discovered that each rod had a value. We really wanted to measure objects in our classroom using the red rods, but we didn't have enough. We had to figure out how we could use cubes in place of rods. We had to figure it out!

We shared our thinking with our buddies:

 



We also learned about additive patterns. We used our adding machine, Bob. We learned that when we put an amount IN Bob, he followed a special rule, or adding pattern, to produce a new amount OUT. We really liked figuring our Bob's rule. Soon, when Bob was full from all of the cubes we put IN and he spit OUT, we had to use our math skills to complete the tables and discover the rule for ourselves.

Then, we created our own adding machines and tables.


In Social Studies, we began our unit on the study of maps. We read a great non-fiction book about maps and globes:

 

 

Then, we recorded what we learned and what we already knew about maps on our chart. We tried reading a map using our direction words like RIGHT, LEFT, ABOVE, and BELOW. Next week, we will learn more about the cardinal directions and a compass rose.

 

To end our week, we celebrated our next Tiger of the Week who displays leadership both inside and outside of the classroom. Way to go!

 

 

Love,

Tiger Team

There is so much for be thankful for...

Dear Family,

As our Thanksgiving break approaches, we have so much to be thankful during this time of year. Mrs. Maggart is so thankful for such a wonderful class and a wonderful school to teach at and for how much each and every one of us enjoys learning.

We have been studying genres: fiction and non-fiction and how each of these genres is the same and how they are different. We even went on a scavenger hunt to find features like captions, table of contents, glossaries, etc. in some non-fiction texts.

Mrs. Maggart gave each of our table groups a book and some materials. She wouldn't tell us what kind of book she had given us or what to do. Soon, we figured out that the book was teaching us how to make a cat!

We learned that this type of text is called procedural text, or how-to writing. We brainstormed all of the different things that we could write about and teach our readers to do.

Because Thanksgiving was just around the corner, Mrs. Maggart of course had to talk about pies...P.I.E. that is for author's purpose! We learned what P.I.E. stands for and looked through our own books to determine the author's purpose.

We decided to create an entertaining piece of writing that was a how-to piece as well...how to disguise a turkey! We had lots of fun writing our pieces and then creating our disguised turkey to match!

We especially loved it when our neighbor teacher, Mrs. Riley, popped her head in with a disguise of her own! She is so silly!

In Math, we have been studying our money and coin values and names very hard. Mrs. Maggart had some fun inflatable money that we used to help us identify coins along with songs and other activities, like making a book and a money mobile.

Mrs. Maggart is especially grateful for the wonderful surprise we had for her on Tuesday to celebrate her birthday. Look at these beautiful flowers we sent Mrs. Maggart, along with a gift card and some delicious cupcakes to share. Wow! Mrs. Maggart is a very, very lucky teacher!

We are ready for a relaxing Thanksgiving break and then it's back to school and back to learning! Everyone have a safe, fun break...even Harley is ready for some Black Friday shopping!

Love,