Our Week In Review

This week we began a new Interactive Read Aloud book.  We are reading The Family Under the Bridge. This story is about a homeless family in Paris during the holiday season.  While reading this book, we are discussing cause and effect, and we will begin to discuss ways to write a brief summary.  In addition, we have really been focusing our efforts on "Talkworthy Questions".  These are questions which inspire discussion about a topic, often without an exact, right answer.  The children are doing very well with this, and I often must stop the discussion long before they are ready to end it.  We will tie this story in with our community of Franklin with our Franklin Food Pantry next week.  We will begin a holiday food drive. More details will follow after our presentation from the Food Pantry.

In math, we have been working hard at understanding decimals.  The children are progressing nicely.  We have our decimals math test this coming Wednesday, and the study guide was sent home today.

In writing we have started our second personal narrative. This time, the children are writing to a topic ~ a holiday.  This is very general, so the holiday may be Halloween, Thanksgiving, or even their own birthday!  I am hopeful that this will be a motivating topic for the children.

Creative Arts Fridays have been going great!  Mrs. Williams has finished with the children's November Acrostic poems, and they will begin to learn about a new poet next Friday.  I can't wait to see what she has in store!

We have begun to work with a new website called Glogster.  The children have a user name and password, to access their information. They may access this site from home if they like, but I've asked them not to make changes to their glogs at this time.  As we all become more fluent with the site, this may change.  I began a glog for the children, and then have asked them to complete it with details that they remember from our presentation with Mrs. Silvia last week. Look for some finished glogs posted here next week!  In the meantime, ask your child to share his /hers. They would love to !


From the Teacher's Desk
Next week, we will begin a new term.  I am hopeful that the second term will be one where we all see a big improvement with homework completion. Many of the children struggled with homework during the first term.  Some of the areas that have been challenging are:

• completing all pages of the homework and returning it the next day
• following the directions so that all parts of the assignment are complete 
• bringing home or bringing back the proper materials
• returning reading logs and getting assignment books signed

As we move toward independence and responsibility, this is something that we will work through together. When you sign your child's assignment book on Thursday nights, it is a great time to check in with him/her to see if assignments were completed that week.  I am sure second term will see 100% homework completion!

Happy Thanksgiving

This week we attended a fantastic presentation from Mrs. Silvia of the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University.  Mrs. Silvia will be at Kennedy 4 times this year as our "Anthropologist in Residence". She will share her wealth of knowledge about several Native American Tribes. This week's presentation was about the Natives of the Northeast (specifically New England).  As always, we are grateful to our PCC for funding such wonderful events.  The children really benefit educationally from hearing about these topics from experts.

The NE Natives were hunters and gatherers.

A stone axe made from a sapling, a stone and sinew.

A demonstration of the "Three Sisters" plants (corn, beans, and squash).

David using a fire starter

Grinding Corn into flour was traditionally a girls' job.

But..... we had everyone give it a try!

This was a traditional bow used by the Natives of the NE.

The Natives used the deer skin to keep warm.

This gardening tool was made from a sapling, sinew, and a deer shoulder bone.

This is traditional Native American clothing worn by women of the Northeast.

This is what boys from the NE tribes would have worn.

Today we gave our Thanksgiving Speeches.  I offered to video tape all speeches for the blog.  We had 4 students agree to be taped!  Below you will see pictures from the speeches, as well as the videos of those brave few!

From the Teacher's Desk

Dear Parents,

        This is the season of giving thanks!  I want to take a minute to thank you for your support of our school activities.  Thank you for all of your generous donations for the class store! I am also so grateful for the Wishing Well donations.  I will be purchasing a lot of new books for our classroom with the Barnes and Noble gift cards. All of these donations of supplies, time and energies are all greatly appreciated!

        Mostly, I would like to thank you for your support with your children.  The consistency and help you give them daily supports what we do in school, and allows the children to understand the importance of our connection.  I feel lucky to have such a wonderful group of families.

       I hope you have a wonderful long weekend and enjoy the company of family and friends. Happy Thanksgiving.

Warmly,

Katie Merten

Our Week In Review

This week we began writing "Partner Poems".  We worked with the students from Mrs. Williams' class to write Cinquains about a character or part of our read aloud, Mr. Popper's Penguins. We will revise and edit these poems next week.

Later in the week, we wrapped up our multiplication unit with some review, and then a test today.  Most of the children did very well on the assessment. Some students are still making errors with addition and multiplication facts.  I have encouraged them to keep practicing!  Please support this effort with your child.

math centers

Black and White Day

Today we celebrated the end of our first Interactive Read Aloud, Mr. Popper's Penguins.  Black and White day was a big success.  We began the day creating Antarctic artwork using black construction paper and chalk.  After the artwork, we took a break from the Black and  White activities to take our math test.  Then we enjoyed our Black and White snacks while watching March of the Penguins.  In art, we were able to create Black and White Collages (thanks Mrs. Hess!). 

Antarctic Art

After art, we played a modified version of Pictionary with Mrs. Williams' class.  We enjoyed the friendly competition of drawing some vocabulary words from our book.  Though Mrs. Williams' class guessed more words, we did enjoy this game!

Later, we took a test about our book, Mr. Popper's Penguins.  Mrs. Merten will correct these, and we will glue them into our interactive read aloud journals. Look for these journals to come home in the coming week or two, so that families can see their child's reading progress. Please remember to return the journal the next day because we will continue to use it for our next story.


Finally today, we got to look at some pictures of ancestors of the students in our class. We were surprised to see so many inherited traits in our friends! 

Happy Diwali!

Priya dressed for her Diwali Celebration

Our Week in Review

Even though it was a short week, it was busy one!  We began the week with a school wide vote for the President of the US.  Kennedy school elected Barrack Obama, just as our country did.  The children had Tuesday off from school.  On Wednesday, we elected our student council representative.  Congratulations to David!

In reading we have been learning about characters and what their actions tell us about their personalities.  We also have been asking "talkworthy questions".  We have been reading Mr. Popper's Penguins as an interactive read aloud, and the children are practicing these strategies in their independent reading. This week, we were lucky enough to have Mr. Whitmore here to discuss his trip to Antarctica.  He showed us some pictures of the land and animals there.  What a nice way to make a text to world connection!  Below are some pictures of his presentation and the penguin quiz!

Thanks Mr. Whitmore!!!

 The Penguin Quiz

Open publication - Free publishing - More antarctica

In math we have been working hard to understand the concepts behind multiplication.  We began by using the area model for multiplication, using base ten blocks.  Here is Dominic demonstrating using the area model.

We quickly moved from that to drawing this model, and finally to using "window boxes".  Here is Mae demonstrating using the window boxes.

We began this morning playing a game called Multiplication Wrestling, and we will formally learn the Partial Products method of multiplication next week.  Mrs. Merten is very proud of the hard work we have done!

Multiplication Wrestling

In Social Studies we began our study of Mexico, and learned about the Mexican Flag.
We will continue our study of Mexico in the coming weeks.