Early Childhood
WOW! Its APRIL already! This month our theme was Spring (despite the snowfall). We talked about spring animals, clouds, rainbows and plants. Some of our favorite books were: It Looks like Spilled Milk, A Rainbow of my own and Spring Animals. In the P the favorite story was Creepy Carrots, we made some creepy carrots and put them around the school. During centers we had a flower shop in the kitchen area, dirt in the sensory table and bugs in the block area. In the PM, we practiced Jolly Phonics, spring vocabulary words by writing the words and building them with letter beads. Also, in the PM we are practicing rhyming words, initial word sounds and patterns. Next month, we our theme will be an author study for Eric Carle and we will have caterpillars! Don’t forgot about our field trip to Hickory Knolls Discovery Center on May 15th, please bring a snack and water, no lunchboxes or backpacks.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten has been engaged in learning about living and nonliving. We have gone on living and nonliving hunts outside as well as created experiments about what plants need to grow. We are so excited to learn about life cycles and how living things grow and change. We continue to work on subtraction as well as learn how to figure out those tricky word problems. Continue to practice with us at home. Happy Spring!!!
First Grade
First grade has been learning about maps. After reading The Orange Splot we created and wrote about our special dream houses.
Second Grade
The 2nd graders have been learning about the different plants and animals of the Rainforest along with seed dispersal in Science. Our focus in Math has been on measurement, telling time, and data.
Reading/ELL
One of the key strategies the students have been learning this month is making inferences. When students make inferences, they use background knowledge and clues from the text to infer information that is not directly stated by the author. This strategy is important to apply in many subject areas such as reading, science and social studies. Marzano (2010) states that it’s important for students to think about four key questions:
- What is my inference?
- What information did I use to make my inference?
- Did I examine my own thinking?
- Do I need to change my thinking?
All of these questions help students understand the ideas when the information in the text is implied. This strategy takes practice and will develop over time. After the Fall by Dan Santat is a wonderful resource to use when teaching inferential thinking.